If you take the time to read the "In The News" and "On TAC Blogs" sections on the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) home page, you will be familiar with the many stories of preventable tragedies due to untreated mental illnesses that occur all too frequently around the country.
We have been advocating to change our treatment laws in Pennsylvania so that individuals with a severe mental illness who also lack insight to seek and remain in treatment will be eligible for that help through the proposed assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) legislation, Senate Bill 226. A story that appeared on July 12, 2008 in The Daily Item by Damian Gessel, Life and death in a Snyder County ditch, is another example of a preventable tragedy, the death of a homeless man named James Farrell.
Both Kurt Entsminger, Executive Director of TAC and Estelle Richman, Pennsylvania Secretary of Public Welfare stated in this article that "Pennsylvania should adopt legislation similar to New York's Kendra's Law, which includes court-ordered mental health outpatient treatment provisions for patients who refuse help."
I couldn't agree more. SB 226, which is modeled after Kendra's Law, has already been proposed by State Senator Greenleaf and currently resides in the Pennsylvania Public Health and Welfare Committee that is chaired by State Senator Erickson. All we need now is to for Senator Erickson to bring this bill out of committee to vote, and then Pennsylvania will become a state like New York that will lower the statistics for homelessness, incarceration and victimization of those whose lives are often devastated by untreated mental illness.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Read Insanity Offense...for a better understanding
I finished reading E. Fuller Torrey's The Insanity Offense this weekend and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the history of deinstitutionalization and the effect it has had on people with severe mental illnesses and the families and friends who love them.
Dr. Torrey gives examples of actual cases of individuals whose untreated mental illness led to devastating consequences from three states in our country, although any state could have been chosen. Sadly, the good intentions of closing down our state hospitals and providing treatment in the community wasn't followed through with intensive services and supports as originally planned and so many have suffered the consequences.
We have a current example from our own state of can happen when a hospital that provided intensive support closes as described in the article from The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, State probes ex-Mayview patients deaths, arrests on June 22, 2008.
Living in the community when you have been accustomed to having the type of intensive support that a hospital provides requires very similar intensive support, such as an ACT (assertive community treatment) program can provide, if the person is willing to remain in treatment and continue prescribed medications. Members of the team can visit a client several times a day when they first are discharged and can continue visits as often as needed. ACT also provides 24-hour crisis intervention.
However, it is voluntary, and without an effective AOT (assisted outpatient treatment) law for someone who lacks the insight that prescribed medications may be necessary, a discharge from a hospital can turn in to a revolving door of crisis situations and repeated hospitalizations, or worse, incarcerations or victimization.
Before any more state hospitals close, hopefully very careful considerations will be given to how many hospital beds are required to provide intensive services for individuals who need that level of support as well as what type of living accommodations and services need to be provided.
Also, read Dr. Torrey's book for his suggestions on what we need to do now that deinstituionalization has changed the way those with severe mental illness receive treatment. There's still hope, but we need to make those changes soon, for the sake of everyone.
Dr. Torrey gives examples of actual cases of individuals whose untreated mental illness led to devastating consequences from three states in our country, although any state could have been chosen. Sadly, the good intentions of closing down our state hospitals and providing treatment in the community wasn't followed through with intensive services and supports as originally planned and so many have suffered the consequences.
We have a current example from our own state of can happen when a hospital that provided intensive support closes as described in the article from The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, State probes ex-Mayview patients deaths, arrests on June 22, 2008.
Living in the community when you have been accustomed to having the type of intensive support that a hospital provides requires very similar intensive support, such as an ACT (assertive community treatment) program can provide, if the person is willing to remain in treatment and continue prescribed medications. Members of the team can visit a client several times a day when they first are discharged and can continue visits as often as needed. ACT also provides 24-hour crisis intervention.
However, it is voluntary, and without an effective AOT (assisted outpatient treatment) law for someone who lacks the insight that prescribed medications may be necessary, a discharge from a hospital can turn in to a revolving door of crisis situations and repeated hospitalizations, or worse, incarcerations or victimization.
Before any more state hospitals close, hopefully very careful considerations will be given to how many hospital beds are required to provide intensive services for individuals who need that level of support as well as what type of living accommodations and services need to be provided.
Also, read Dr. Torrey's book for his suggestions on what we need to do now that deinstituionalization has changed the way those with severe mental illness receive treatment. There's still hope, but we need to make those changes soon, for the sake of everyone.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
We're all responsible
I received a comment to my previous post yesterday which made me realize that there still continues to exist so much misunderstanding about assisted outpatient treatment laws.
The comment I received was: "Yay. More dead psych patients to come, thanks to you and yours http://youtube.com/watch?v=dx11j0kcLn4. Hard for anyone to remain in treatment when they're killing their patients left and right."
The video is certainly a very sad, tragic story of loss of life due to neglect of the hospital staff and they should be held responsible for not providing the help that woman obviously needed. However, assisted outpatient treatment laws, such as Senate Bill 226, means that a person is provided treatment in the community where they live and they are given supportive services by the mental health agency or provider who is required by the court order to ensure the timely, consistent treatment, including medications, is provided for an individual wherever they reside.
Hospital emergency rooms aren't the only places where people are ignored. I think it is also terrible that, as a society, we walk by homeless people with a mental illness every day and ignore them as they sleep on the streets. They are often victimized (robbed, molested, left out in the elements) and sometimes commit crimes that then put them in jail or prison. People with severe mental illnesses who lack insight to seek treatment are ignored by our mental health system all the time, unless they are engaged in a dangerous activity. Even families who try to help their loved ones who are exhibiting psychotic symptoms and who desperately need help have to wait until there is a "clear and present danger" to report in our state.
So, yes, that video was a stark example of the neglect of the hospital staff and they should lose their jobs. But what consequences should the mental health administrators and agencies face because, on a daily basis, large numbers of people with a mental illness are neglected, too. You don't see them on a video in a psychiatric hospital, but just wander through the streets, visit some jails, or maybe go to a NAMI support group and listen to the families who are unable to help their loved ones obtain consistent treatment because they haven't yet done something to fulfill the "danger to self or others" that is required by law. Or visit the Treatment Advocacy Center's "Preventable Tragedies" site to see how many people we turn our backs on day after day, year after year.
In the end, we're all responsible for this negligence. Requiring our state law to allow for timely, compassionate assisted outpatient treatment would show that we understand and want to help those who lack insight to seek and remain in treatment. Passing Senate Bill 226 would show that we care...it is the responsible thing to do.
The comment I received was: "Yay. More dead psych patients to come, thanks to you and yours http://youtube.com/watch?v=dx11j0kcLn4. Hard for anyone to remain in treatment when they're killing their patients left and right."
The video is certainly a very sad, tragic story of loss of life due to neglect of the hospital staff and they should be held responsible for not providing the help that woman obviously needed. However, assisted outpatient treatment laws, such as Senate Bill 226, means that a person is provided treatment in the community where they live and they are given supportive services by the mental health agency or provider who is required by the court order to ensure the timely, consistent treatment, including medications, is provided for an individual wherever they reside.
Hospital emergency rooms aren't the only places where people are ignored. I think it is also terrible that, as a society, we walk by homeless people with a mental illness every day and ignore them as they sleep on the streets. They are often victimized (robbed, molested, left out in the elements) and sometimes commit crimes that then put them in jail or prison. People with severe mental illnesses who lack insight to seek treatment are ignored by our mental health system all the time, unless they are engaged in a dangerous activity. Even families who try to help their loved ones who are exhibiting psychotic symptoms and who desperately need help have to wait until there is a "clear and present danger" to report in our state.
So, yes, that video was a stark example of the neglect of the hospital staff and they should lose their jobs. But what consequences should the mental health administrators and agencies face because, on a daily basis, large numbers of people with a mental illness are neglected, too. You don't see them on a video in a psychiatric hospital, but just wander through the streets, visit some jails, or maybe go to a NAMI support group and listen to the families who are unable to help their loved ones obtain consistent treatment because they haven't yet done something to fulfill the "danger to self or others" that is required by law. Or visit the Treatment Advocacy Center's "Preventable Tragedies" site to see how many people we turn our backs on day after day, year after year.
In the end, we're all responsible for this negligence. Requiring our state law to allow for timely, compassionate assisted outpatient treatment would show that we understand and want to help those who lack insight to seek and remain in treatment. Passing Senate Bill 226 would show that we care...it is the responsible thing to do.
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