The drive to improve “Kendra’s Law”
Perhaps the most consequential proposed legislation to fly almost completely under news media radar at the end of session has been a bipartisan bill that would amend and upgrade Kendra’s Law, which allows judges in certain situations to force people with serious mental illness to undergo treatment.
Mental health advocate D.J. Jaffe has laid out a case for enactment of the Kendra’s Law Improvement Act, sponsored by Sen. Catherine Young (R-Olean) and Assemblywoman Aileen Guenther (D-Forestburgh), and he has now followed up with this budgetary impact analysis.
Jaffe estimates that Kendra’s Law, first enacted in 1999, has saved $109 million through a reduction of incarceration and hospitalization costs. By identifying more people who could benefit from Assisted Outpatient Treatment, the proposed improvements to the law could lead to greater savings, he says, estimated the net cost of the program improvement would a relatively paltry $329,000.
New York spends massively on mental health services, but Jaffe contends the state has its priorities backwards:
The least ill go to the head of the line while the most seriously ill are offloaded to shelters, jails, prisons, and morgues — off the mental health budget and onto the more expensive criminal justice budget. The mental health industry knows this is happening, but won’t do anything about it.
While the bill is favored by the Alliance for Mental Illness, it is opposed by mental health providers, including the Mental Health Association of New York State.
The reforms are needed, as anyone with a family member suffering from a mental illness will tell you. This is the only medical condition that the health professions refuse to treat at the early stages of an outbreak. The law requires that they wait until a full-on manic or schizoid episode takes control of the patient before they can hospitalize him. It is cruel to everyone affected and it is indefensible in a humane society.
Comment by mark alesse — June 18, 2012 @ 12:57 pm
Kendra’s Law is a good start but there is so much more legislation that needs to be written. You can read all about it here: http://www.spooked.biz/litigationprogress.html
Here are some horrifying facts I have learned about mental health care in America in 2012:
1. there is no legislation (US or NY) requiring psychiatric hospitals to have security cameras in the wards, which is carte blanche for staff to abuse patients — did you know that? Shouldn’t there be?
2. “Use of force” incidents don’t need to be videotaped in hospitals but they do in prisons. Did you know that? Shouldn’t they be?
3. U.S. federal prison laws, and the U.N. laws governing the treatment of prisoners of war, are more stringent than U.S. and NY laws applying to psychiatric hospitals — did you know that? Hospitals aren’t required to guarantee patients any fresh air time, visits from their family, drinking water, appropriate clothing, freedom from corporal punishment…etc. Shouldn’t they be?
4. The facilities at Guantanamo Bay are better than the “best” psych hospital in New York. Did you know that?
5. There is no law requiring hospitals to show patients their policies and procedures, did you know that? In other words, hospitals say you must abide by their rules but they won’t tell you what the rules are. Shouldn’t all hospitals’ policies and procedures be publicly available?
6. There is no specific requirement for hospitals to show patients their medical records while they are in the hospital (other than the HIPAA 10-day law, for which allegedly no private cause of action exists), did you know that? Shouldn’t there be?
7. The police (NYPD) seem to think that NYS penal code doesn’t apply inside of a psychiatric hospital, so if you are assaulted inside a hospital they think it isn’t their problem. Lawyers tell me this is untrue. Shouldn’t the law clarify that?
Shouldn’t we modify the laws to close these loopholes?
Comment by L. Andersen — June 18, 2012 @ 9:06 pm