Furious Seasons

July 30, 2009

New Jersey Forced To Halt Illegal Detention Of Psychiatric Patients

The Bazelon Mental Health Center, based in Washington, D.C., and Disability Rights New Jersey yesterday announced a landmark settlement with the State of New Jersey under which approximately 300 psychiatric patients in state psychiatric facilities will be released from those facilities and be provided with housing and services in the community. These people are already medically cleared to leave state hospitals--to be uncommitted in essence--but since the state couldn't find housing for them in their communities (or didn't want to find them housing), they were being held for a year and longer at state psych facilities in a kind of weird and cruel legal limbo.

Under the US Supreme Court's 1999 Olmstead ruling, patients who are stable and deemed able to leave state psychiatric care, and who want to live in the community, are supposed to be able to leave the facilities with the state obligated to provide them community-based housing and supports. New Jersey was in violation of Olmstead and the above-mentioned groups sued the state.

I congratulate the people at Bazelon and Disability Rights New Jersey for striking an important blow for the freedom and decent treatment of the mentally ill.

The reality is that this kind of situation exists all across America and it is disgusting and inhumane. I wrote about a similar group of patients caught in the same net in Washington State in Seattle Weekly in 2004.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at July 30, 2009 10:27 AM

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Comments

Everyone should 'No Exit'---a great piece of writing, and after reading that an going inside that institution--the article is gripping.

Posted by: Stephany at July 30, 2009 11:54 AM

I liked your Seattle Weekly article, Philip. Very sympathetic and fair reporting.

Posted by: Francesca Allan at July 30, 2009 12:25 PM

I don't suppose the mental health experts stop to consider the impact of this on the patients' mental health? Nah...

Posted by: Lisa at July 30, 2009 08:33 PM

I think we should put the govt in charge of all health care, not just mental illness care for those who do not have means to pay. This case just shows how much better off we will all be in the near future.

With govt-provided health care, the long line of civil rights cases regarding the improper hospitalization, and improper treatment, of psychiatric patients will necessarily be revisited with non-psychiatric issues as well. It will again take decades, but the end results will be a piece of paper assuring rights which will be unfulfilled, as Olmstead-type civil rights requirements often are.

Posted by: medsvstherapy at July 31, 2009 06:53 AM

What struck me down and hurt me were the comments in the NJ piece by the readers.

I had spent 4 days in a psych hospital in NJ. I will forever be grateful that was all the time I spent.

Posted by: susan at July 31, 2009 07:42 AM

It's had to celebrate any announcement from New Jersey especially where so many individuals will continue to experience more years of unnecessary hospitalization. In 2005, persons with mental illnesses looked forward to the promise of 10,000 new housing opportunities funded by the Special Needs Housing Trust Fund. It will likely create only 2,000. More recently NJ committed itself to implement the principles of "Wellness & Recovery" system wide only to find that its largest state psychiatric hospital is the subject of a US Department of Justice CRIPA investigation.

What our nation's mental health system so often represents that it will achieve sometime in the future is too often absent from the subsequent reality. Let's not get too excited where we have been promised so much for so long only to find that too little or nothing was actually delivered.

Posted by: Anonymous at July 31, 2009 08:48 AM