Introduction to the Case
Mauro Galvan’s family panicked when he didn’t come home. On a warm day last October, Galvan was released from the state’s Elgin Mental Health Center, where he was being treated since being found not guilty by reason of insanity in an attack on a nurse in 2019. He was supposed to be delivered to his brother, with whom he was planning to live. But his brother, who works in construction and couldn’t leave his jobsite, couldn’t keep his appointment to pick him up.
The Incident
So, according to his family, Galvan was dropped off by an Illinois Department of Human Services worker on the sidewalk in front of the Pacific Garden Mission at 1458 S. Canal St. in Chicago, with the state employee then driving away. Galvan, 39, apparently never entered the building. His disappearance set off a desperate, months-long search. On Jan. 22, the Chicago Police Department circulated a missing-person poster of him.
The Search and Aftermath
He was found about two weeks later, on Feb. 4. A friend of his family spotted Galvan in Back of the Yards, where he and his siblings grew up. His family picked him up at a McDonald’s. He told them he’d been living in tents, “out in the cold,” under blankets, with other people who didn’t have housing. He wasn’t able to give his family a clear account of what happened to him but said his “eye hurt.”
Mauro Galvan’s History of Mental Illness
His sister Cristina Galvan, a Chicago elementary school teacher, says her brother has been in and out of hospitals since he was a teenager because of mental illness. “He hears voices,” she says. “He can become very, very violent.” Once, Mauro Galvan broke his mother’s arm. Another time, he threw himself out of a van and broke his own arm because he didn’t want to be in a hospital for mental treatment. And once he attacked his mother’s boyfriend, who had to get stitches. “He used to run after me with knives when I was 10,” Cristina Galvan says.
Systemic Issues
The Illinois Department of Human Services, which operates state mental hospitals, wouldn’t comment on what happened with Mauro Galvan, citing medical confidentiality. In a written statement, the agency says: “IDHS works to ensure that patients are discharged to the safest available location when they no longer require inpatient care. Once a hospital treatment team decides a patient is ready to be discharged . . . a social work team creates an aftercare plan. When possible, patients are discharged to family homes, permanent supportive housing or ‘specialized mental health rehabilitation facilities.’ However, in some infrequent cases, patients who do not have stable housing and who cannot be placed in another supportive setting, due to factors such as their clinical presentation or criminal background, are discharged to a community-based shelter.
Concerns and Fears
Many ways to improve treatment are expensive and could be in peril if Medicaid funding is slashed, experts say. One of the biggest problems with Illinois’ mental health treatment system is a lack of coordination, they say.
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