SAVE LIVES WITH INVOLUNTARY COMMITMENT LAWS
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.5370/pub_detail.asp
Exclusive: Save Lives – Changes to Involuntary Commitment Laws Needed
DJ Jaffe
This week:
A Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania woman who sliced the baby from the wombof a teenager and then killed the mother was found guilty but mentally ill.
In Bloomington Illinois, a man accused of fatally bludgeoning his 14-month-old daughter with a baseball bat was determined to be mentally unfit to stand trial.
In St. Paul, Minnesota, a grocery store worker was randomly stabbed by someone with schizophrenia. He told police he chose his victim because he was male.
While most mentally ill individuals are not violent, those who have very serious illnesses and are not receiving treatment are more violent as a group than the general population.
Their victims are most often themselves (5,000 a year kill themselves). The second most likely victims are family members. According to a 1994 Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report – “Murder in Families” – of parents killed by children, 25.1 percent of defendants had a history of untreated mental illness.
Currently the law in many states prevents inpatient commitment until after the person with mental illness becomes “danger to self or others.†That’s absurd. Laws should help prevent violence, not require it.
The effort to change laws is being led, not surprisingly, by those who care more about the mentally ill than public safety: the parents and families of the ill. For them, reform of involuntary treatment laws can help their loved ones survive safely, lead semi-normal lives, and avoid the homelessness, incarceration, and victimization that pervade the lives of many with untreated, serious mental illness.
However, the parents have made little headway. The fact is, no one wants to reform laws to help the mentally ill other than their families. It’s hard to get up a head of sympathy for people living under seven layers of lice-infected clothing and eating out of dumpsters on the city streets.
But more recently, stories like the woman who sliced a baby from the womb, the father who bludgeoned his 14-month-old daughter, and the clerk who was randomly stabbed have brought new advocates to the party: those concerned about public safety.
Police, sheriffs, wardens, and public safety advocates have stepped in to do what the mental health system is failing to do: get treatment for the most seriously mentally ill.
The Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Virginia, brought the advocates for the mentally ill (most notably, the National Alliance on Mental Illness) together with those who protect public safety (most notably the National Sheriffs Association) and proposed reasonable improvements to laws. Many of these needed changes were outlined in Madness in the Streets, the seminal book on the subject co-authored by Rael Jean Isaac.
Perhaps the most resounding success of the Treatment Advocacy Center was their efforts to get states to adopt involuntary outpatient commitment laws, also known as “Assisted Outpatient Treatment.†These laws allow courts to order certain mentally ill individuals to stay in treatment as a condition of living in the community. The laws are aimed at helping “revolving door†patients and those who have a past history of violence associated with failure to comply with treatment. The patient’s rights are protected through stringent due-process protections. It is well known that past incidence of violence associated with treatment non-compliance is a good predictor of future violence. So why not require these individuals to stay on court-supervised violence preventing treatment.
The first Treatment Advocacy Center sponsored AOT law was New York’s Kendra’s Law, named after Kendra Webdale, who was pushed to her death in front of an oncoming train by a man with who went off his schizophrenia treatment.
In the 10 years since its implementation, the results have been nothing short of outstanding in helping the mentally ill and in keeping the public safer.
Over a six month period:
55 percent fewer recipients engaged in suicide attempts or physical harm to self;
49 percent fewer abused alcohol;
48 percent fewer abused drugs;
47 percent fewer physically harmed others;
46 percent fewer damaged or destroyed property; and
43 percent fewer threatened physical harm to others.
Among the mentally ill individuals in court ordered treatment:
74 percent fewer experienced homelessness;
77 percent fewer experienced psychiatric hospitalization;
83 percent fewer experienced arrest; and
87 percent fewer experienced incarceration.
Eighty-one percent of those receiving the court-ordered treatment stated it helped them get well and stay well.
The law sunsets in June. But there is intense opposition to making it permanent from providers of mental “health†services who fear having to treat the mentally “ill.â€
There is also some, albeit decreasing, opposition from “civil libertarians†who claim Kendra’s Law is a violation. But in reviewing the homelessness, incarceration, violence, suicide, poverty and other problems faced by the mentally ill, Herschel Hardin, himself a civil libertarian, wrote:
How can so much degradation and death – so much inhumanity – be justified in the name of civil liberties? It cannot. The opposition to involuntary committal and treatment betrays a profound misunderstanding of the principle of civil liberties. Medication can free victims from their illness – free them from the Bastille of their psychoses – and restore their dignity, their free will and the meaningful exercise of their liberties.
Right he is.
Whether your interest is in helping the mentally ill, or keeping the public and law-enforcement safer, reform of involuntary treatment laws can help. Go to treatmentadvocacycenter.org to learn what’s going on in your state, or visit kendraslaw.org to find out more about Kendra’s Law.
NYTAC is a grassroots ad-hoc coalition founded by the Arlington-based Treatment Advocacy Center (501-c-3) to make NY’s Kendra’s Law permanent. Members are individuals with mental illness, their families, public safety advocates and organizations who believe Kendra’s Law is a balanced fiscally responsible way to help those with mental illness and protect public safety.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor DJ Jaffe was a long-time board member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and is a co-founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center (treatmentadvocacycenter.org ) and coordinator of the NY Treatment Advocacy Coalition (kendraslaw.org).
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