Abandoned to the Streets - Around the World

Through the "google alerts" I've set on my computer, I found a new web site, World Fellowship for Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders, an organization that was originated in Canada with a membership of organizations around the world, including NAMI. The opening paragraph of the article I read, "Abandoned to the Streets" is: "It's been a hard year. I would not have been able to tell you most of the time where my daughter was — how she spent her days, or with whom. Carrie is a grown woman, attractive and kind-hearted; but she also suffers from the most debilitating of mental illnesses: schizophrenia."

The story really hit home because of a caring, concerned mother I've recently been in touch with, Bernadette, who was very worried because her daughter with a mental illness was constantly wandering off and not taking her medications that helped her. Bernadette worried for her daughter's safety and, after her daughter was missing for a month, Bernadette finally learned that she had spent that month in jail for a minor crime, because, without medications, her daughter wasn't thinking very clearly.

Unfortunately, the treatment laws in my state, Pennsylvania, require that individuals with a mental illness and lack of insight to make a request for medications and other treatments that could help them must first do something that shows that they are a "clear and present danger to self or others" before treatment is provided. While waiting for this dangerous level to be reached, many people in this situation do wander off, sometimes become homeless and find themselves in situations where they are victimized or sometimes are involved in minor crimes or worse.

When treatment works and helps someone with a diagnosis of mental illness, why put them and their families through the torture and worry of waiting for a dangerous situation to occur? That simply makes no sense at all. Any caring society would want to provide the help that would enable someone to avoid the type of dangerous situations that routinely occur with untreated mental illnesses. When enacted, Pennsylvania's proposed assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) bill, SB 226, will help people like Bernadette's daughter to receive treatment in a psychiatric hospital or in the community with the support of an intensive case manager or an ACT program, not in a jail.