New York Needs Kendra's Law: You can help

(May 2012, New York) Kendra's Law allows courts to order a small subset of people with serious mental illness who have a past history of violence to accept treatment as a condition for staying in the community. Kendra's Law has been very successful at keeping patients healthier and preventing needless deterioration to violence. See Kendra's Law op-ed in Albany Times Union.

But Kendra's Law has giant cracks in it that send the most seriously ill to jails, prisons, shelters and morgues. A bipartisan Kendra's Law Improvement Act has been proposed to close the cracks that has wide-ranging support including by NAMI/NYS, NYS Chiefs of Police and many others who want better care for people with mental illness. But it is being vigorously opposed by OMH funded community mental health providers and county mental health directors who don't want to have to treat the most seriously ill. They prefer to cherry-pick the easiest to treat for admission to their programs and bury their head in the sand about the most seriously ill.

Please call Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver at 518-455-3791 and Governor Cuomo at: (518) 474-8390.
Urge them to Pass the Kendra's Law Improvement Act (A 6987) to Close the Cracks In Kendra's Law
We have generated media attention, but not enough calls
This is critical.

The legislative session is coming to an end and Cuomo, Silver and Skelos will be deciding whether or not to help people with mental illness by closing cracks. The NYS mental health industry is lobbying them heavily to preserve the cracks.

Thank you for all you do. Spread the word. Forward to friends.

The media is on our side, but we need more calls:

Op-ed in Today's Albany Times Union
Op-ed in Yesterday's Buffalo News
Editorial in NY Daily News
Op-ed in NY Post by Bill Sponsors
Op-ed in Ithaca Journal:
Letter in Schenectaday Gazette
Op-ed in NY Daily News
Editorial in Staten Island Advance

DJ Jaffe
Executive Director
Mental Illness Policy Org.
http://kendras-law.org