Quincy Jackson III’s mother has watched as her once bright-eyed, handsome son sank into disheveled psychosis, bouncing between family members’ homes, homeless shelters, jails, clinics, emergency rooms and Ohio’s regional psychiatric hospitals. His entire adult life has been a repeating cycle of psychotic episodes and police encounters, often ending in arrests at local hospitals where he was supposed to get treatment.

Jackson and Patrick Heltzel are tragic examples of how mentally ill people in Ohio and the nation can’t get the help they need until it’s too late.

Criminally Ill: Systemic Failures Turn State Mental Hospitals Into Prisons

When Heltzel first showed signs of schizophrenia in 2013, a judge ordered just days of intensive mental health care in a state psychiatric hospital. Within weeks of his release, he brutally stabbed a neighbor to death.

Charged with aggravated murder, Heltzel was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2016 and put back in that same hospital, where he could spend the rest of his life. Mental health advocates and even some state officials lament that a terrible crime shouldn’t be the surest path to meaningful treatment. 

Doctors have said for years that Heltzel is ready to leave. But he continues to occupy a state psychiatric bed that patients like Jackson need. That’s the hallmark of a failing system. 

Across the nation, psychiatric hospitals are short-staffed and consistently turn away patients or leave them waiting with few or no treatment options. Those who do receive beds are often sent there by court order after serious criminal offenses.

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Donate to The Marshall Project.Mass shootings and celebrity deaths may dominate news cycles of mental-health-driven crime. But Jackson’s is the more common story felt in local communities.

In our latest reporting on the intersection of mental health and criminal justice, I partnered for most of 2025 with KFF Health News to examine how Ohio’s mismanaged, understaffed and overwhelmed state psychiatric care system is undermining treatment, failing thousands of patients and leaving residents less safe — a pattern that’s repeating in communities across the U.S.

Sincerely, Doug Livingston
Staff Writer
The Marshall Project – ClevelandRead the Full Story

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