...needed mental health help...weeks in an ER instead.

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By his fourth week waiting for help in the emergency room, Zachary Chafos's skin had turned pale white from lack of sun.

For Zach, everything about the ER made things worse. His autism meant he had little understanding of his surroundings, and his speech was mostly limited to one- or two-word sentences. The only place the hospital could house him during lengthy stays in 2020 and again in 2021 was a sunless room in the middle of an ER filled with the overwhelming sound of other patients in pain. Later, his parents would look back on those weeks, especially the final ones, with deep regret and guilt.

Amid the pandemic, his parents were allowed to visit Zach just once a day. He'd struggled with debilitating epileptic seizures since age 14, prompting his parents to measure his medication down to the milligram. In the ER, doctors changed his doses, Zach's medical records show, and he had two massive seizures within his first several days there.