His watch stopped just before he drank a quart of antifreeze mixed with root beer.

Then Mitchell Madorin sat in front of a broken window on an upper floor of an abandoned factory and stared at the Mississippi River below. “I knew I’d signed my death warrant,” he said.

He was half dead when UNITY caseworkers Mike Miller and Shamus Rohn toted him down three flights of stairs and into LSU Interim Hospital.

Five days later, when the hospital released Madorin, 52, he was frantic. He didn’t understand how he’d become suicidal, he said, and worried that he might make another attempt.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong