I was going to post this in the dead-Barb thread but it has more to do with Chris and the coming Homeless Saga than it does with the hag.
I think people, kind of as usual for this board, are too sure that things are going to be totally a mess for Chris in very specific ways. When the worst is predicted it often doesn't come true. Chris is nothing if not unpredictable (except for being lazy/ssdn) and instead finds supremely autistic ways to make shit worse for himself in unexpected ways.
I think that he
will get psych care if he is on the street, and there is at least a small chance it will help him, but now we're in the terrritory of him being on heavy psychotropic medication. Chris is definitely
not "just" autistic, but he's also not schizophrenic, he's a strange edge case: schizotypal, with some cluster B traits, some weird psychosexual shit (not just weird fetishes, see my recent post about
sadomasochism and the Idea Guys) and probably some affective component (bipolar-like but not classically so) possibly even with a touch of honest-to-God PTSD from trolling. This is all of course on top of the autism. He's a great clinical case, the kind you want to present in grand rounds, and his lack of contact with psychiatry is honestly surprising. Just a tiny handful of doctors who he was mostly forced to see and Rocky.
Now, once on the street, he will be acting bizarre in public and the police will be obliged to check him out. His frustration tolerance is so low I can't imagine him dealing with this well. Even if he can sort of do adult things, the stressors of homelessness will really wear him down. And dealing with police isn't something he has a history of dealing with well. Could be security people too, then police. Both regularly deal with the local homeless population including telling them to piss off from certain areas and coming to take them away (
ha-ha) every time they do something sufficiently beyond the norms of society. Which Chris will no doubt be doing. He will be talking to Magi-Chan (among others which) and as I mentioned
above, even something as benign as the Defensive Hedgehog Posture is enough to attract the attention of cops if done in most public areas (i.e. where normal people are going to be living, shopping, eating, etc., basically everywhere but the real hoods or the middle of the woods, and Chris isn't going to get on in either.)
I am not familiar with the state mental health laws of Virginia, and many states have very poor mental health systems, but this doesn't mean that Chris isn't going to be brought to the hospital for 72 hours (or however long) on a regular basis. This will happen just about anywhere if you act bizarre enough. "Danger to self and others" generally includes total inability to care for oneself as well as actual suicidal or homical ideation. So I'd see him being in and out of the hospital quite a bit, interspersed with longer state hospital stays (which can be fairly short or long depending on jurisdiction...all of this is not info that's going to be easy to obtain publicly. The way the laws read and the way stuff actually works are often very different. We'd need an informant inside the system to let us know what really goes down.) Jail I honestly doubt unless he assaults someone meaningfully.
People upmeme or downmeme him going to a "home", but that would be part of the discharge plan for many public and some private psychiatric wards. It would generally not be forced, though, but the question is whether Chris would rather submit to the rules of the home or the vicissitudes of homelessness. I think also that he might take meds if they are explicitly offered daily (a service that doesn't exist in low level group homes but does in some facilities, again I don't know VA well enough to speak to which ones, but I am certain they exist.) Optimistically this could even possibly approach a happy outcome with some equilibrium restored and his delusions getting better.
