PA and VA - What We Have in Common

Providing the proper infrastructure of sufficient services for individuals with a diagnosis of severe mental illness such as acute respites, clubhouses, crisis centers, and hospitals is obviously a requirement that every state should have in place.

However, both PA and VA also have a need to change our treatment laws so that the small minority of people with a severe mental illness and lack of insight to seek and remain in treatment are provided the timely treatment they deserve through an assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) law, such New York's Kendra's Law.

In an article written by Alexander Harris, Capital News Service in the Henrico Citizen, "Lawmakers Seek to Update State’s Mental Health System," on January 27, 2008, Jonathan Stanley from the Treatment Advocacy Center states, “Should we help someone who is sick and determine what’s in their best interest, or abandon them without care?”

As Mr. Stanley also states, "A quarter of 1 percent of New York’s population [under Kendra's Law] is placed in assisted outpatient treatment programs every year. The same standards would place about 300 Virginians with mental illnesses into treatment programs that they would not receive otherwise."

In Pennsylvania, using the same statistical analysis, the number of people who would benefit from our proposed legislation, SB 226, would be about 500 a year, or, if broken down by area, approximately 8 people per county.

Hopefully both PA and VA will soon adopt a sensible approach through our proposed AOT legislation to help those who most often find themselves homeless, victimized, or incarcerationed because of lack of timely treatment.