Special report: A broken mental health system

BREAKDOWN: Launch the Denver Post investigative series.

Dee Fleming tried to protect her son from the voices in his head, the ones that told him he should die.

She chased after him the night he ran toward the neighborhood church with a baseball bat in his hand. She worried to the point of exhaustion when he didn't come home at night, then returned beat-up and missing his watch. She thought she was holding it together, if barely.

One day last April, when he was oddly quiet and confused, almost catatonic, Fleming took him to Swedish Medical Center's emergency room and told doctors he was suicidal.

They sent him home.

Two days later, Fleming's son downed dozens of prescription medications and household cleaning supplies, doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire in her front yard. He lived only because a neighbor called 911 to report something smoldering on the lawn. A police officer who knew him kept him conscious until an ambulance arrived.

What came next for the Fleming family was almost as shocking, a battle for treatment that epitomizes the massive breakdown in care for mental illness in Colorado and the nation.

Doctors treated his burns, but not his mind.

Despite the family's pleas and a months-long battle, their 37-year-old son was released from Porter Adventist Hospital to a transitional shelter.

The mental health care system is in crisis. More than 50 years after states began shuttering mental institutions, the system hasn't recovered leaving emergency rooms, jails and shelters as last-ditch stops to handle the most severe cases.

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Special report: A broken mental health system