California Bill To Extend Laura's Law Scheduled For Vote

ALERT FROM CALIFORNIA TREATMENT ADVOCACY COALITION
FROM: Carla Jacobs, Randall Hagar, Chuck Sosebee & Mark Gale
May 22, 2012

We need your help now! AB 1569, a bill to extend Laura's Law, will be heard in the Senate Committee on Health June 13 at 1:30 p.m. at the state capitol, Room 4203. Please reach out to the committee and your senators and urge them to support the bill.

(Laura's Law allows courts to order a narrowly defined group of seriously ill individuals to stay in treatment as a condition of living in the community. It also allows courts to order the mental health system to provide the treatment.)

Send or direct letters of support to Senator Ed Hernandez, chair of the Senate Committee on Health and to Senator Tom Harman, vice chair. Let them know that Laura's Law saves money - and lives. Contact information is below:

Senator Ed Hernandez, chair (Senate district 24)
Fax: (916) 445-0485
Mailing address: State Capitol, Room 4085, Sacramento, CA 95814-4900
Phone: (916) 651-4024
Email: senator.hernandez@senate.ca.gov

Senator Tom Harman, vice chair (district AD 73)
Fax: (916) 319-2173
Mailing address: State Capitol, Room 5094, Sacramento, CA 95814-4900
Phone: (916) 651-4035
Email: senator.harman@senate.ca.gov

Mail and Fax are Preferred to Email.
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Visit http://treatmentadvocacycenter.org/lauras-law or http://lauras-law.org/ to learn more.

NYS Mental Health "Leaders" Race to Avoid Mentally Ill. Call Now

Please call Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver at 518-455-3791 and Governor Cuomo at: (518) 474-8390 and urge them to Close the Cracks In Kendra's Law. This is critical. Now is the time. Tell others to call too.

Research shows there are giant cracks in Kendra's Law and these cracks are putting patients, public, police and families at risk:

1. People with mental illness who are being released from Involuntary Treatment (i.e, were already danger to self or others) are not being evaluated by hospitals for inclusion in Kendra’s Law or other community treatment.
2. Mentally Ill Prisoners who are being released from jails and prisons (i.e, already committed a crime) are not being evaluated for inclusion in Kendra’s Law or other community treatment.
3. Mentally Ill people who have previously attacked family members, are not being considered for Kendra’s Law or other community treatment, especially if the family has not reported attacks.

Kendra’s Law (court-ordered outpatient commitment) is proven to reduce violence, arrest, incarceration, hospitalization, homelessness and suicide when used, but is not used for the most seriously ill because neither hospitals, prisons, jails, local mental health directors or NYS OMH wants to accept responsibility.

NYS Senator Catherine Young and Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther introduced The Kendra's Law Improvement Act (A6987/S4881) to close these cracks by requiring officials to accept responsibility for the most seriously ill, but mental health officials oppose it.

Head in the sand" approach to the seriously ill.
The main sticking point is that mental health officials do now want to even know about people with serious mental illness, much less be obligated to provide treatment.

1. Hospitals are objecting to provisions that ask them to evaluate patients prior to release to see if they could benefit from Kendra's Law.
2. Jails and prisons are objecting to provisions that ask them to evaluate the incarcerated mentally ill prior to release to see if they could benefit from Kendra's Law.
3. Local Mental Health directors are objecting to being informed by families, hospitals, or prisons about people with serious mental illness who may need help.
4. OMH is objecting to having to oversee and monitor Kendra's Law to ensure people with serious mental illness who could benefit form Kendra's Law gain access.
5. The trade association for those who provide non-medical voluntary mental "health" services (NYAPRS) objects to more attention being paid to those not well enough to volunteer for treatment.

Since no one wants responsibility, individuals with serious mental illness are being sent to the streets, jails, prisons and morgues instead of treatment.

Please call Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver at 518-455-3791 and Governor Cuomo at: (518) 474-8390 and urge them to pass A6987 to Close the Cracks In Kendra's Law. This is critical. Now is the time. Spread the word. Tell others to call too.

Providing services to the most seriously ill should be, the core function of mental hygiene directors and the office of mental health. Their raison d’etre. Unfortunately, this core function of providing services to the most seriously ill is often ignored in favor of providing services to others. This approach sends the most seriously ill to jails, prisons, shelters and morgues and puts public and police at risk. Improvement of care for the most seriously ill is almost always and exclusively obtained by legislation or law suits. The Kendra’s Law Improvement Act is one such piece of legislation. It not only allows courts to commit the seriously ill to accept treatment, it commits the mental health system to meeting their core responsibility of providing it.

Assemblyman Felix Ortiz and Lack of Care for Mentally Ill

Earlier this month New York City Police Officer Eder Loor was stabbed in the brain by Terrence Hale, 26, a young man allegedly with untreated mental illness. His mom had tried unsuccessfully to get mental health authorities to treat him. They wouldn't. The stabbing ensued.

It was oh so predictable. And it's likely going to happen again possibly because of Brooklyn Assemblyman Felix Ortiz who heads the Assembly Mental Health Committee. Over the last few years, I and other advocates for the mentally ill and advocates for public safety have met with Assemblyman Felix Ortiz to urge him to pass legislation that would strengthen New York's Kendra's Law. As I explained in a New York Daily News op-ed this week

Kendra's Law allows courts to order a very small group of seriously mentally ill patients who have a history of violence or incarceration to accept violence-preventing treatment as a condition of living in the community. Courts can also order the recalcitrant mental health system to provide treatment to these seriously mentally ill people .

The results of Kendra's Law have been outstanding in terms of reduced dangerous behavior, violence, arrest, trial, incarceration, homelessness, hospitalization, suicide and more.

But the law has giant cracks in it that New York State Assemblymember Aileen Gunther-a former nurse with psychiatric room experience, and State Senator Catherine Young proposed closing. Their bill (now A6987/S4881) would

• Close the crack in the system, whereby prisoners who relied on mental health services while imprisoned or have been involuntarily committed are discharged without determining if they need mandatory treatment to stay healthy and prevent them from becoming dangerous again.
• Close the loophole whereby if a person under court order moves to a different county, the new county isn't informed so it can continue to provide treatment.
• Close the crack in the system whereby court orders can expire without a review of whether they should be renewed.
• Clarify that a county should investigate reports of individuals in need of Kendra's Law services received from family members.
• Require physicians to make a reasonable effort to gather useful information from the patient's family or significant others.
• Allow doctors to presume under certain conditions that patients who materially violate their treatment orders should be taken to a hospital to see if they need admission.

Had these been in place, Officer Loor may not have been stabbed. Terrence Hale's mom did try to get mental health authorities to treat her son and they did not listen. Terrence Hale had been released from a jail without local officials being alerted he may need community-based mental health treatment. The bill would have made both those scenarios less likely. But Assemblyman Ortiz is still waffling. The mother of Kendra Webale whom Kendra's Law is named after told a Daily News reporter she

blamed Ortiz, chairman of the Assembly's Mental Health Committee, for bowing to pressure from advocates for the mentally ill and blocking the Young/Gunther bill. "I have gone head to head with Ortiz and his office, and at times he has seemed extremely, genuinely supportive. And then the tune would change."

In an editorial the Daily News wrote

As chairman of the Mental Health Committee, Brooklyn Assemblyman Felix Ortiz bears responsibility for squashing Young and Gunther's measure. He bottled it up without a vote despite a mountain of evidence showing that severely disturbed mental patients who enter court-ordered treatment are less violent, less likely to be homeless, less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol and less likely to attempt suicide than those who do not.

In a follow-up editorial they explained

For too long, supposed mental health advocates have prevailed in Albany with the preposterous argument that mandating medicines for the mentally ill to save their lives and the lives of others is a violation of civil rights.

How true. One trade association for providers of non-medical services to people with mental illness said we need better trained police units, as if the problem was Officer Loor didn't duck the knife well enough. Assemblyman Felix Ortiz released a statement echoing these 'advocates' by claiming the important battle is not knives in the hands of untreated mentally ill who stab cops, but the use of 'stigmatizing' language.

I have a mentally ill relative. This bill is supported by the Alliance on Mental Illness of New York State and many others who like me, love people with mental illness and want to keep them, the public, and the police safer. The mental health committee should immediately pass this legislation to prevent the next tragedy. Assemblyman Ortiz can be reached at (718) 492-6334 or (518) 455-3821.