'Shame, Shame' on NYS Mental Health Policy
Shame, Shame
Syracuse Post-Standard Editorial November 25, 2002
No one chooses to be mentally ill. Just as no one would choose to get cancer
or contract diabetes, no one wants their brain to betray them. People with
mental illness are victims just as those with any other chronic illness. They
need medical attention.
Mentally ill people who are too sick to care for themselves or those who are
so affected that they could be dangerous are rightly the state's
responsibility. For generations, people with mental illnesses were confined to
locked hospitals. Some languished in wards for decades, having little contact
with the outside world. As science learned more about the problems of the
mentally ill, and as different forms of therapy developed, experts recommended
that many individuals could lead better and happier lives in community-based
programs.
New York, like many other states in the 1960s, began shutting down the
hospitals. Some of them well deserved to close. They were horrible places -
dark and dank. Unspeakable things happened in those old wards. Patients were
abused every way possible. Their closure ended a grim era in this state's
history.
But the state never fulfilled the other half of the promise. Patients were
chucked out of the hospitals, but there simply were not enough places for them
to safely land. Instead of community-based homes with lots of supervision and
the proper kind of care, thousands of mentally ill people were left to fend
for themselves or they were sent to locked nursing home wards - trading one
nightmare for a new set of terrors.
Earlier this year, The New York Times uncovered records that proved hundreds
of mentally ill people were prisoners in nursing homes, never allowed outside,
living in wards and rooms with little or nothing to help them be well.
This month, the Times exposed another outrage. Hundreds more of these patients
were sent to nursing homes in New Jersey and Massachusetts - homes that were
already in trouble with their own state governments for being substandard.
They are places without the expertise or staff to care for people who are
mentally ill. Yet, according to state records, just two nursing homes in New
Jersey have collected more than $82 million in New York Medicaid payments
since 1995.
In Massachusetts, the Sun Bridge nursing homes, known to be substandard in
every important way, were paid $260 million to care for mentally ill New
Yorkers, according to the Times, which cited Medicaid records. This is how bad
some Massachusetts homes are: One patient gouged out the eye of another with
his bare hands.
"Massachusetts regulators say the Sun Bridge facilities have deteriorated
markedly in recent years, repeatedly criticizing them for mismanagement,
shoddy care, sexual assaults and other violence among residents, including the
resident's eye gouging last year," said a Times report.
Mental illness, like physical illness, often requires carefully calibrated
care. Medications have to be prescribed and delivered with precision. Talk
therapy has to be consistent. Neither of those things that can be provided by
people qualified only to look after aged people. Are any of the people sent
out of state ever seen by doctors? How does that work?
Through all of this, Gov. George Pataki has insisted the decisions to move
patients to nursing homes were made on a medical basis. He told the Times
during his campaign that more than 5,000 patients were brought back to New
York, but no records could be found to substantiate that. John Signor, a
spokesman for the state Health Department, told the Times the administration
had sent fewer than 50 people annually to facilities outside New York. In
fact, Medicaid records show that since 1995, more than 725 New Yorkers have
gone to the Lincoln Park and Andover nursing homes (in New Jersey) alone, an
average of more than 90 a year.
Why the lies? Perhaps it's because the mentally ill don't have big campaign
contributors writing checks on their behalf. Perhaps it's because Pataki knows
it's wrong to victimize mentally ill New Yorkers this way.
Here in Syracuse, Hutchings Psychiatric Hospital was targeted by Pataki for
closure. It still could be, and God knows where the patients would end up.
This administration must be more forthcoming about its plans for caring for
the mentally ill.
Source:
http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/opinion-1/1038130657261900.xml
This 'Mental Health E-News' posting is a service of the New York Ass'n of
Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, a statewide coalition of people who use
and/or provide community mental health services dedicated to improving
services and social conditions for people with psychiatric disabilities by
promoting their recovery, rehabilitation and rights.
To join our list, e-mail us your request and, where
appropriate, the name of your organization to
NYAPRS@aol.com.
Last Updated on
04/08/04
webmaster@namiscc.org
