Profiles of four psychiatric patients and how they fared:

14-year-old boy: Family forced to fight for treatment

Family photo (ENLARGE)

Bronnie Watson's mother says he was moved without family consultation.

Andy Miller/Staff

Now a waiter in Atlanta, Peyman Farzaneh hoped to be transferred from a psychiatric hospital, but state staff could find no openings in community programs.

ABOUT THIS PROJECT Federal probe: • Justice Department finds 'critically deficient' conditions | Report PDF • Patients' safety slighted • Remedy will be costly • Feds hit Columbus hospital Call for reforms: • Mental hospitals under review • Consumer advocates seek tighter controls Part 1: A young Sarah Crider is among the victims Part 2: Suicide exposes neglect Part 3: A fatal struggle -- but no punishment Part 4: Lax security, easy escape, tragic ending Part 5: Rapid decline at hospital shatters family Part 6: Patients shunted to inns, shelters, streets • Two who lived — and two who died Part 7: Children housed with alleged offenders Part 8: A lonely end to a life of madness Part 9: Unlicensed homes can pose deadly dilemma Justice delayed?: Worker charged in 2004 sex case still not tried Questionable deaths: • A look at cases around the state Verification: Over 190 abuse cases verified Workers: Volatile environment also threatens staff Solutions: • Experts offer ideas • Feds can step in Interactives: • Map: Locate Georgia's mental hospitals • Video: Reporter discusses findings

The boy's first stay at the hospital lasted three weeks, but didn't seem to work.

He had arrived in March at Georgia Regional/Atlanta after expressing suicidal thoughts. Almost from the start, though, his family had questions about his care. The boy, 14, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, went days without bathing, his clothes unwashed, until his parents complained.

He got into fights, and was sedated several times at the hospital, said his father, Shon Harp of Canton, who requested his son's name be withheld because of the stigma surrounding mental illness.

On April 6, a hospital worker abruptly told the family to pick up the boy that evening. The hospital arranged no discharge meeting with the family, and provided no paperwork about the boy's treatment, Harp says.

When picked up, the boy didn't know he was leaving. "He didn't have a clue," Harp says.

It soon became clear to the family that the boy's condition had not improved.

Less than a week after the hospital discharge, the boy told other kids that he was going to blow up his house and his school. He then denied saying it, Harp says.

But on April 16 — the same morning as the shootings that left 33 dead on the Virginia Tech campus — the boy was arrested at school with a lighter, an aerosol spray can, and blasting powder from his model rocket kit.

"He told kids that he knew where the propane tank was, and that he was going to blow it up," Harp says.

That landed the boy back at Georgia Regional.

But after just three days at the hospital, a social worker called Harp to say his son would be released the next day.

Harp was told the boy was no longer a threat to himself or others.

The news of the sudden release astonished his father and stepmother. They feared for their safety — the safety of their 5-year-old daughter. How could he have gone from threatening to kill others to being OK after just three days?

A hospital doctor said the boy needed long-term residential treatment, according to Harp. But the paperwork would take a long time, the doctor said, and the boy would have to go home first.

The doctor said that if the family didn't pick up the boy, they could be charged with child abandonment, Harp said.

The boy's mother, Trish Frazier, began calling state officials, pleading for the boy to remain in the hospital or under state care. She told the officials she would go to the media with the story.

The barrage of calls had an impact. An official told Harp that the boy would remain at Georgia Regional until a residential placement was found. In late May, the boy was transferred to a private residential treatment center, partly paid for by the state.

"If their hand wasn't forced," Harp said, "they would have released him and put him in DFCS custody."

Bronnie Jackson Watson III: 'He was torn to pieces'

Bronnie Jackson Watson III, 63, spent six months at Georgia Regional in Atlanta. Then, without consulting his family, his mother said, the hospital transferred him in 2005 to a nursing home in Metter, almost 200 miles away in Middle Georgia.

"I got him on the phone," said Watson's mother, Emily Smith, 89, of Lawrenceville. "My son didn't want to talk. He was crying. I was crying. He was torn to pieces."

Two days later, Watson was dead.

An internal report at Georgia Regional later concluded that the hospital's staff erred in not making sure the nursing home could properly care for Watson. In explaining deaths like Watson's, experts in long-term care use the term "transfer trauma." His death certificate says Watson died from heart disease, cardiac arrest and an alcohol-related psychotic disorder.

Watson died not knowing that his mother was looking for a place for him in the Atlanta area, closer to her home.

"I tried, with the social worker, to bring him back," Smith said. "I never had a chance to tell him that I was bringing him back."

Peyman Farzaneh: Wound up in a shelter

After he lost his apartment in Atlanta, Peyman Farzaneh tried to kill himself. He also needed help for drug abuse. But in 32 days at Georgia Regional in Atlanta, Farzaneh said, he received little treatment.

Instead, he said, with his unit woefully understaffed, another patient attacked him. The assault left Farzaneh, 46, with two broken bones in his nose and one in an eye socket. It also severed a nerve in his cheek; he described the lingering effect as like being on Novocain all the time.

Farzaneh had asked to leave the hospital before the attack. But staff members said they could find no openings in community programs. "They said, 'You could go to a shelter,' " he recalled.

When he complained that he was being harassed by another patient, the one who later assaulted him, Farzaneh said, a nurse offered this advice: "You need to bust his head up. He'll leave you alone."

After the attack, hospital workers found two possible placements for Farzaneh. Neither, however, was suitable, he said. Finally, on Feb. 22, he agreed to move into a homeless shelter in Atlanta.

"They give you two MARTA tokens," said Farzaneh, now a waiter at an Atlanta restaurant. "I got on the bus to Baptist Rescue Mission."

Lamar Hunt: No group home available, so he lived in his van

When Lamar Hunt entered Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta in October 2005, he had a history of alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide attempts. His home, he told hospital workers, was an old Chevrolet van parked in Atlanta's West End.

Hunt, 39, spent 11 days at Georgia Regional. Hospital records show he went from despondency — he "does not see what everyone else sees in him," as a social worker wrote early in his stay — to expressing optimism about his future.

Hunt told therapists he wanted to move into a group home for people with mental illness. There, he reasoned, he could receive treatment while looking for a job.

But the hospital could find no group home that would take him. Staff members told him he should instead move into a homeless shelter.

"You promised me a place," Hunt angrily told his activity therapist, according to the report from a later state investigation.

The therapist told an investigator he suggested that Hunt could still follow his "coping plan," even in a shelter.

"It may be a little harder," the therapist said. "It's just a matter of where he spends his nights. ... Sometimes being in a shelter will motivate you to reach goals."

Hunt's response, according to the therapist: "I better not see you outside."

As he prepared to leave the hospital a few days later, records show, he told his psychiatrist he had no intention of taking his prescribed anti-psychotic medications.

And he said he would not attend his appointments at a Fulton County mental health clinic.

"He just wants to hit the streets," the psychiatrist wrote in Hunt's file, and then he let him go.

Hunt returned to his inoperable van, parked by the curb in front of the decaying brick houses that line Holderness Street, just off Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard. He slept on a rollaway sofa bed in the van's cargo area.

Several days later, on Nov. 6, 2005, a friend realized he had not seen Hunt for a time. When he checked the van, the friend found Hunt's body lying in bloody vomit on the sofa bed, according to a medical examiner's report. A belt fashioned from a shoelace held up Hunt's Levi's. The pockets contained 41 cents.

An autopsy found Hunt died of meningitis. A state investigation found that Georgia Regional employees "followed their policies and procedures."