Is This California Housing Program the Ideal Model for Treating People with Severe Mental Illness?

California Health Report by Ricky Rodas, April 30, 2026

To those who knew him, Noah Silver was a bright, happy child identified as gifted with a penchant for playing instruments. He started playing bass guitar at the age of 11 and picked up acoustic guitar a year later. Silver took guitar lessons and taught himself to play drums. But in his teen years, something changed, his mother, Kartar Diamond said.

Over the course of a summer, Silver became rebellious and moody, Diamond recalled. What she hoped was a phase soon spiraled into paranoia and delusions of grandeur. Noah began to believe he was a great spiritual leader and became paranoid that every musician in L.A., including a neighbor, was stealing his musical ideas. Noah Silver is a pseudonym, used at the family’s request to protect his identity.

For years, Silver was misdiagnosed by clinicians as having social anxiety or bipolar disorder. Some psychiatrists thought his condition might be a phase due to the behaviors manifesting in Silver’s teen years, Diamond said.

Finally, a visit to a psychiatrist at UCLA when he was 17 years old revealed the truth. “He said, ‘No, this is schizophrenia,’ and he actually gave me a pretty dark view of what the future was going to look like,” Diamond said. Schizophrenia is often misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder because schizophrenic symptoms can mirror mania episodes associated with bipolar disorder.

The diagnosis was difficult for the entire family. Diamond was upset because she didn’t want her son to have to go through life with a mental illness but knew she had to accept the situation if she wanted to help him. For years, she struggled to find care for her son due to a lack of quality residential housing programs in California, expensive monthly rates, and long waiting lists at both public and private long-term psychiatric facilities.

Now 35, Silver lives in a residential housing program in Orange County for people with severe mental illnesses. It is run by the John Henry Foundation, a nonprofit organization serving clients with schizophrenia. Diamond said that her son’s seven-year stay there has been far better than any other facility he has lived in. Silver’s tumultuous care journey resulted in stays at nine different board and care facilities as well as a recovery residence for formerly incarcerated persons, five hospitalizations, and a bout of homelessness. Diamond signed up her son Silver for John Henry’s waiting in 2016, and in 2019 he moved into their campus in Santa Ana.

“I feel really grateful that he’s there,” she said. “It is like a needle in a haystack.”

Read more from California Health Report here.