My little brother is schizophrenic. About a week and a half ago he attacked my dad's girlfriend then went in the kitchen to get a knife. He's been in the hospital since and now they're ready to release him. My dad doesn't want him living with him anymore so they're going to put him in a home. I've been in the psych hospital many times and I hate it and I hate that it's come to this for my brother. I can't imagine going into one of those places and never being able to leave. It's like prison for the mentally ill. I think my dad should break up with his girlfriend and let my brother come back home. That's not really a good solution though. My brother needs some serious care. I don't know what to think about all this.
Your brother needs to either (A) be under 18 or (B) do some serious criminal violence against others to be held against his will for any real duration. Ten day psych holds are about what you can get out of a violent incident and even then, that means that the shrinks on duty think they can get him back to a semi-even keel. I've known some profoundly impaired schizophrenics and even the most scrooge-like libertarian would rather pay for halfway houses than any other alternative. The shitty thing about schizophrenia is if you've had more than a couple episodes, you can kind of expect to be dealing with it through your 50s. The great thing about schizophrenia is once you start treating it like any other disability you can lead a semi-normal life. I recommend E. Fuller Torrey's Surviving Schizophrenia. Your little brother will need an advocate and it sounds like that's you. Cowboy up, and good luck.
I own Surviving Schizophrenia and I coincidentally have E. Fuller Torrey's page open on my wikipedia tab after I saw the book on my shelf and wanted to know who he is. I've been diagnosed as schizoaffective but I think I have schizoid personality disorder. But what do I know. I have another younger brother. It'd be nice if we could all live together and support each other but my family is massively dysfunctional.
The run-of-the-mill mental health system is pretty fucked up (read: underdeveloped). I'm very sorry this happened. At the luncheon last week I was reminded of the different resources available. Via post history, I read that you're in Georgia? Here's some great resources including a free clinic for help. This is a link to the Mental Health Association of Georgia. The MHA is pretty good (from what I know) with both mental health advocacy and directing patients to actually helpful resources. I linked you straight to the resources page where I found one of a handful of free clinics I could find. We only have one out-patient here in CFL, but it takes care of diagnosing, check-ups, treatment, the whole 9 yards for free. They estimated saving patients over $1mil last year alone in out local clinic. I hope this is a help.