Advocating for change to mental health laws

As I've been preparing for a presentation at the NAMI National Convention, I've been thinking about the reasons I am involved in advocating for a change to our mental health treatment laws.

My personal involvement with accessing treatment for my family member who has schizoaffective disorder and lacked the insight of understanding that she had a treatable illness is what first drew me to learning about how our mental health system, governed by our Mental Health Procedures Act, operates. After meeting many parents who also shared their stories of the difficulties of accessing timely treatment, it reaffirmed the need to become actively involved in changing our laws that put family members on hold, waiting for a clear and present dangerous situation to first occur before needed help was provided.

Research shows that untreated mental illness is the cause of frequent hospitalizations, homelessness, and incarcerations. An article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Compassion, Compulsion and the Mentally Ill, by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, states the statistics from a recent study on homicides committed by individuals with severe mental illness in Indiana which shows that, "homicides were preventable, since the perpetrators in most cases were not being treated."

Assisted outpatient treatment laws have been shown to make a difference, as the outcomes from New York's Kendra's Law prove. And so, besides my own personal reasons and those of other families, the research studies and outcomes from mental health treatment laws that are effective are all the reasons that I continue to advocate for changes to the laws in my state.