NYAPRS Note: The largest newspaper that publishes in the part of the state served by Kendra’s Law expansion bill sponsor Aileen Gunther has offered the following editorial that takes a different focus, concluding that treal solutions lie in strengthening and enhancing local community service systems to better serve “to help the millions of others who pose no threat to society but who are condemned to suffer with little hope for recovery.”

The paper goes on to emphasize that proposals like the forced treatment expansion proposal operate in a misplaced way “to treat symptoms but never get to the ills that cause them.” It concludes that such a proposal doesn’t advance our healthcare system but rather “has more in common with the way the state treats sexual predators than it does people with severe health challenges.”

 

Editorial: Treating The Symptoms Will Not Cure The Illness

Middletown Times-Herald Record  April 22, 2012

 

With attacks by two mentally ill men on two New York City police officers – one an Orange County resident – in the past few weeks, and with other incidents still fresh in the memory of local officials, a much-needed call for action is going out.

However, without money to back up that call, even more money to fulfill many promises broken over the decades, and the recognition of how much needs to change, we are unlikely to see real progress.

A bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, D-Forestburgh, would help tighten up some procedures about mandating treatment and keeping track of the mentally ill who commit crimes.

Joe DeStefano, mayor of Middletown, supports the bill and knows very well the dangers of being targeted by someone with a serious mental illness. A man tried to confront DeStefano at his home last year – the same man later killed by court officers when he charged into City Court firing a shotgun.

As DeStefano noted, however, the state must do more. Since “deinstitutionalization, there’s been a gap in care. There’s not enough money invested and enough structure invested in protecting not only the public, but the clients.”

We don’t talk much about “deinstitutionalization” these days, but we should. It was the theory that if the state closed the large institutions that critics said served more as warehouses than treatment centers, people with mental illness of varying severity could get treatment in community-based settings – much more appropriate to their individual needs.

But it did not happen. The institutions closed, the money for treatment never came, and the mentally ill were left to make their way – not into a network of community homes, but onto the streets or into a system that soon was overwhelmed by the challenge and has stayed pretty much that way ever since.

This approach is both expensive and ineffective, as illustrated by a challenge Sullivan County is facing. It spent nearly half its yearly budget for inmate mental-health hospitalizations in January alone.

While it is popular to talk about treating mental illness as a health issue, most of the legislative agenda focuses on criminal procedures and penalties. Even Gunther’s well-meaning attempt has more in common with the way the state treats sexual predators than it does people with severe health challenges.

The justification for such legislation is the need to protect the public, a very legitimate concern. But the danger that the criminally mentally ill pose to the public is more of a symptom than a cause – a symptom of the failure to help them and to help the millions of others who pose no threat to society but who are condemned to suffer with little hope for recovery.

Only recently have insurance companies been compelled to end their discrimination against people with mental illness and provide coverage with adequate compensation and fewer restrictions.

Until the state and the federal governments start keeping those promises that started – and ended – long ago with deinstitutionalization, we are bound to see more attempts like Gunther’s – laws that try to treat symptoms but never get to the ills that cause them.

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