When 18-year-old Amanda Lipp needed to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 2010, her mom thought it would be easy to find a bed.

Instead, Pam Lipp says, “It was a nightmare.”

Amanda had been admitted to a psychiatric crisis center during an episode of psychosis but she could stay there for only 72 hours. Lipp asked the crisis center for help finding her a bed and was told she was on her own.

So Lipp plugged her phone into the wall in the waiting room and started calling one hospital after the next. They were all full. They wouldn’t reserve a spot when a bed opened, nor would they call to let her know. So she called each one every half-hour to check. After eight hours, she found her daughter an open bed near their home in Fair Oaks, Calif. Click here to read more from Jenny Gold.