SELINSGROVE -- One generous blue-skied May afternoon, a young woman parked her car across from the patch of grass and weeds Joseph Farrell came to call home.

She crossed the street, a paper-wrapped sandwich in her hand, and bent down to the ditch.

"I thought I'd bring you this," she said. "In case you get hungry."

Farrell stared up at her. A smile lifted his sunburned lips. He'd by then been living along the side of the road, a few hundred feet away from a Sheetz gas station, for more than a month. All his belongings -- his guitar, his picture albums, his Bible, his CD player, his bicycle, the tattered scrap of silver insulation he used as a poncho and blanket -- were heaped in a pile atop the matted grass.

"Thank you, sweetie, but I can't take this," Farrell told the woman. "I'm waiting for my honey to come back to me and it just wouldn't be right."

Like so many other of the nation's homeless, Farrell was likely mentally ill. He fervently believed he was a prophet, sent here to spread his own apocalyptic brand of religion.

For reasons he didn't explain, his girlfriend, Tina, had left him. He spent his days on the side of the road, the words "Joe and Tina" emblazoned in electrical tape on the front of his sweatshirt, waiting for his girl to return.

In his world, a gift from a woman -- even a sandwich -- could throw the universe out of balance and blow a curse on his chances to get Tina back.

"Well, just in case," the young woman said, confused now, placing the sandwich on the ground beside Farrell. It would remain there, uneaten.

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There are more than 700,000 homeless in the United States, thousands in Pennsylvania alone. A third of those suffer from some form of mental illness.

In October of 2007, Estelle Richman, Secretary of the Department of Public Welfare, testified before the state Senate Health and Welfare Committee that Pennsylvania's mental health procedures laws are "not working well."

"(Pennsylvania law is) not helping people get the treatment and services they need in times of crisis," she said as part of her sponsorship for Senate Bill 226, a still unpassed piece of legislation seeking better mental health outpatient practices.

Richman and others have argued that, though Pennsylvania law stipulates those with serious mental health issues may be subject to involuntary treatment, the state lacks adequate staff support and housing. There simply aren't enough resources to get everyone help who needs it.

Even with adequate resources, however, there's no guarantee someone like Farrell would receive treatment. The Columbia Montour Snyder Union Mental Health service system cannot force treatment on someone not deemed dangerous to himself or others, and an individual must be identified before intervention can begin.