Working Their Way Back

Drugs and therapy help, but many mentally ill also need social rehab. Here's how it succeeds

On a day in 1995 that he recalls only vaguely, Bobby Frazier, a beefy sandblaster from Long Beach, Calif., took his diabetic mother to the hospital and, inexplicably, waited for her on a bench at a nearby bus stop. When he learned that she had died, he refused to leave the bench and remained there for 16 months. "My mind completely snapped," Frazier, 38, explains. "I slept sitting up and urinated on myself. My family brought food. Bus riders gave me blankets. I religiously believed that my mother would one day get off that bus."

Four years later, Frazier is well...

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