Many families dealing with mental illness are ill-equipped to deal with the complex issues that surround this epidemic. Knowing this, a new transitional housing facility is being built in Athens.
It is called the Adam-Amanda Mental Health Rehabilitation Center and it will become the only one in the state that will serve as a half-way house for those discharged from a psychiatric hospital.
Patients can live here 50 days instead of on the street.
For parents, it's welcome news. Those that have dealt with the diagnosis see the need.
"It was a sledge hammer in the face for me," said Tom Walker whose son was diagnosed at 21-years-old.
"At first I thought I was a bad parent," said Janet Polzer who son was diagnosed at 19-years-old.
The diagnosis can leave a parent struggling for answers especially in areas of the state where resources are not available.
"When we first got into this we felt like it was a death sentence we thought we lost our son," said mother Anne Walker.
Athens County is not unlike most of the state when it comes to treating the mentally ill.
Patients enter a psychiatric hospital and are released in seven days.
"That doesn't give anyone the time to get the medications working," said Polzer.
Most are discharged without housing, but that's about to change.
The center was named after Adam Knapp and Amanda Baker who took their lives shortly after leaving the hospital.
Adam was killed in 2010, Amanda in 2015.
"We are trying to find a way of doing something that is different," says Terry Russell of NAMI Ohio.
He said mental illness in Ohio and across the country have been a revolving door of treatment, jail, treatment, and then repeat.
When the center opens in December, it will have 16 beds. There's a reason why it can't be bigger because the federal law won't allow it.
"If you are in a residential setting you cannot build if you have more than 16 beds no other illness would that be a requirement of the federal government," says Russell.
Russell said the law needs to change.
"We're gong to try to do this all over the state we're going to have five of these in the next five years in every place that has a state hospital," said Russell.
It will take $2 million to renovate the rehab center, NAMI is contributing $100,000 and the state is contributing $500,000.
The rest comes from private donations.