It’s been a few years since I last read the book 72-Hour Hold by late author Bebe Moore Campbell. It’s a fictional story about a mother grappling with her daughter’s severe mental illness (bipolar disorder) and the tribulations of navigating a woefully inadequate mental health care system. The story, grounded in some hard truths, was based on the author’s personal experiences with her own child. I remember the wealth of emotions that book took me through as we followed the heroine’s desperate efforts to help her baby girl. I can still vividly feel the pain she felt as she grieved the loss of their mother-daughter relationship. The fear, guilt and hopelessness were tangible. So were the barriers they faced. The stigma surrounding mental illness, the mistrust of the medical community, and that black community culture that said problems at home should remain there, only to be discussed around the family dinner table on the second Sunday of the month, were very real. It was a