Her sanity unraveled, but why?

A 49-year old woman had been demeaned by poverty. A homeless shelter was committing her because the staff said she was ill, she was not "Right."

At the hospital, several people waited in the psychiatric ward. The hall was like a path to an ant hive. Bits of news were shredded on seats. Tiny footprints of people tip toeing on the shining floor broke the glossy vinyl.

Today, more than ever, the mentally ill have been made invisible.

The white clad nurses of the psychiatrist hovered over the glassy eyed woman. The silence seemed like a guillotine dropping.

A psychiatric commitment had been decided. The process included observations by thrift store workers, kitchen staff and a maintenance man from the shelter.

Complaints described her behavior. It was suggested that her privacy had been invaded. Had that been enough to make her angry and therefore, described as inappropriate.

She had been a cancer survivor.

The sad faced woman was drooling from the fresh meds delivered to her a few days earlier. What if she had only been eccentric and the thrift store employees were guilty of scapegoating?

Had Kafka been there, that writer of surreal stories about innocents who are turned into nothing more than insects, he might have commented about the rationale of reasonable people.

The shelter's counselor had thumbed through the pages of a book about ethics. Still, no one cared if there were ethics involved.

The choice to go to court to absolve the homeless shelter also made sense. Everyone said it was in the woman's best interests. And of course, she cussed.

She had taken clothes from the thrift store because she didn't have any. Sometimes, she carried food from the shelter dining room to the basement sorting room, the pitiful space she had been given.

In the case of a person who hurts deeply, isn't empathy expected, or is it arbitrary?

Here was a middle-aged woman unable to speak about the psychic pain she endured. Then she was committed. It was the Bastille from the Tale of Two Cities where the forgotten were given the task of making and sorting shoes.

In the hallway of the psychiatric unit the silence felt unbearable, yet the brave people there did not speak about the homeless woman's sanity, despite the moral obligation.

If so many people in her environment had been watching her, were they creating her demise?

She was homeless. She asked for help. Then, she grew distraught. The watchers intensified their watch. She saw them … Did the group turn into the cause of the sad faced woman's commitment?

It was said she was paranoid.

After she was admitted, the group from the shelter stared at each other in quiet disbelief. What had happened?

In the ends of such a journey, the question confronts all: is the time and the place and the people, the environment, the cause of the psychic pain?

Can it be that the environment should be put under watch and not the single person who started to unravel?

Tim Trenkle has been a psychology lecturer in Iowa's college system.