Fourteen years ago, The Seattle Times published two pieces I wrote about my sister and our family’s struggle to get her sustained mental health treatment.

The first was after she jumped off the Highway 520 bridge on New Year’s Day 2010, and the second when the community came together to support us later that year.

After being rescued from Lake Washington in 2010, my sister was hospitalized in the psychiatric unit at Harborview Medical Center for a month and underwent 18 electroshock treatments before being admitted to Western State Hospital in Tacoma. There, she tried to take her own life again by putting her head under the wheels of a semitruck.

By February 2011, my sister became stable enough to be discharged to a residential mental health facility. We sold her car and spent down her assets so she qualified for Medicaid and Social Security disability income.

Fast forward to 2024: I’m happy to report that my sister has resided at the same Sound mental health facility in Redmond for the past 13 years. But that’s about to change.

King County has determined my sister is now doing too well to receive the level of care that has kept her safe and stable for more than a decade. The county informed Sound that it will pay for my sister’s care only through May 31. King County bases this on a number system, which considers her one point better than she needs to be to stay where she is.

In 2010, I pointed out how hard it is to get someone into the mental health care treatment system. In 2024, I am discovering how hard it is to keep them there.

The mental health system is a revolving door. And in the end, it costs families and taxpayers more grief and money than if we treated those who need mental health services with compassion and continuity of care.

Just because someone is doing well doesn’t mean that they don’t need a sustained level of mental health services. Would we stop giving a diabetic insulin if their glucose numbers are stable?

Her caregivers at Sound have told the county that my sister should remain where she is, the place where she has rebuilt her life.

King County behavioral health personnel are adamant that my sister must move, but have let her stay as long as we show progress toward moving her out.

What does that progress entail? It began with a two-and-a-half-hour in-person assessment for both of us at the state Department of Social and Health Services. It involved a walk down memory lane of all the involuntary treatment my sister has undergone beginning in high school.

The assessment was used to determine what daily rate the state will give my sister for her care. With that, we have been off to the races to find an adult family home that has an opening and will take her for that rate. It’s an unlikely scenario in affluent Redmond.

If we do secure a place in such a home, my sister will become an outpatient and must find a way to get to her therapeutic and psychiatric medicine-monitoring appointments. Currently, she receives these where she lives. In the past, she couldn’t motivate herself to go to outpatient appointments or take her meds, which resulted in the cycle of involuntary treatments.

My sister’s assessed daily rate is also $20 less than what is needed to keep her at the Sound facility in Redmond. The family is prohibited from supplementing that amount.

It appears King County’s aim is to get my sister off the county rolls to maximize their budget dollars, and onto the state rolls where she will no longer be a cost item for the county. Can we please look at people who need continuing mental health care as people and not as budget numbers?

Can we please stop the merry-go-round and keep my sister where she is safe and stable and has formed sustaining relationships that give her purpose and some semblance of normalcy? Must a good mental health story come to a crushing end?