D.J. Jaffe passed away several weeks ago after a brave 15 year battle with leukemia.
DJ was a very controversial figure who was a determined advocate for positions that have always been anathema to NYAPRS and our greater national community. He invariably sought to falsely connect violence with mental illnesses, espoused forced outpatient treatment as the solution to almost every policy challenge, pressed for institutional rather than community services, sought to weaken privacy protections and federally funded advocacy and legal rights organizations, dismissed the value of peer support, believed that employment was not possible for most and insisted in the press and his book that recovery and rights focused groups like NYAPRS by name wanted nothing to do with people with the most ‘serious’ conditions, preferring instead to pocket the profits from closing outmoded state hospitals or serving the ‘worried well.’
I only wish he and his supporters had been willing to see that the millions of previously incarcerated, homeless, repeatedly hospitalized, severely traumatized or suicidal Americans that we successfully engage and support every day would indeed be among the most distressed and rootless were it not for their connection to the recovery vision that has driven the innovative peer and rehabilitation supports that our national community has championed for so many years.
And I wish that they knew about peer-led program models like a pilot in Westchester County that is successfully engaging 8 out of 10 individuals who had previously rejected or not responded to services, despite claims that they were incapable of accepting help because they suffered from an unproven organic condition called anosognosia.
I believe that DJ was truly devoted to helping people in need and admirably gave his all to that goal every day so it was a tremendous shame that we couldn’t work together to help community members and their families who had been abjectly failed by the traditional systems that we came to replace, systems that historically had blamed and labeled people as ‘non-compliant’ and their families as ‘dysfunctional’, instead of looking at their own inability to voluntarily engage and serve people in need.
And I wish that he had fully understood that the NYAPRS members who regularly came to Albany over the past 2 decades to successfully prevent the expansion and permanence of Kendra’s Law were staunch and sincere self and system advocates for persistent voluntary outreach and engagement and were not being paid to be there, as he once suggested.
DJ was a devoted and tireless warrior. Though we were invariably at odds, I never doubted his sincerity and dedication. We offer our sincere condolences to DJ’s family, friends and supporters.
Harvey Rosenthal, NYAPRS