A prominent judge says the parish jail has become a de-facto replacement for closed psychiatric wards, and the sheriff who runs the prison agrees.

The district prosecutor carries out investigations and orders psychiatric examinations, usually to be carried out in closed psychiatric wards.

The Federal Government, which cut its spending on housing and social programs, can be faulted, along with the state, which closed psychiatric wards and failed to provide sufficient community residences for the mentally ill.

Anti-suicide guidelines say plastic bags should not be left on locked psychiatric wards because of the risk they present."

Her navete is tested during a pastoral stint at Bellevue when she realizes that "the only places in the hospital where patients have time or inclination to discuss theological questions are the locked psychiatric wards and prison units."

The revolution these new drugs promise will have a huge impact on the addiction-treatment industry (or, as it prefers to think of itself, the "recovery movement"), which runs the gamut from locked psychiatric wards in big-city hospitals to spalike mansions in the Malibu Hills of California.