NAMI Morehead program addresses mental health care reforms and HR 3717

Posted: Thursday, August 21, 2014 9:59 am
Read more here: http://www.themoreheadnews.com/news/article_69120abc-293b-11e4-a85e-001a4bcf887a.html

On Tuesday, Aug. 26, NAMI Morehead (National Alliance on Mental Illness) will host a program designed to shed light on the nation's mental health care system and how HR 3717 (“The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act”) would help.

Speaker GG Burns of Lexington is an advocate for individuals living with psychiatric disabilities. She will discuss specific mental health care reforms that are needed and how the legislation proposed by U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy (HR 3717) could help avert suffering and tragedy that so often ensue from untreated serious mental illness.

Burns is the founder of the “Change Mental Health Laws in Kentucky” Blog and cofounder of “Treatment Before Tragedy” (TB4T), a nationwide group that advocates in congress for better mental health treatment, services and research for a cure.

A long-time NAMI member, she received “NAMI Kentucky's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 and in 2014 was recognized by the Community Health Charities MediStars as “Volunteer of the Year.”

Among the issues to be addressed at Tuesday's program are the following:

• An estimated 600,000 homeless people and 356,000 inmates have untreated mental illness and approximately 40,000 of them die of suicide each year.

• Most of the $125 billion per year spent on “Mental Health” goes to vague services that rarely focus on the most serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression.

This presentation, which is free and open to the public, will be held at the Rowan County Public Library from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. For more information, call 784-4551.

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Morehead in central Kentucky, is a beautiful town right out of a travel postcard. It's surrounded by the Daniel Boone National Forest, full of culture and scenic beauty.

Their local NAMI Morehead affiliate board president, Carol Mauriello requested me to present on H.R. 3717 and the need to reform mental health laws in Kentucky earlier this year. However, due to schedule conflicts, I was unable to meet with NAMI Morehead until August 30, 2014.

L-R, Carolyn Miller, Carol Mauriello and GG Burns 

The following are a few photograhps made at our meeting. Thanks to all the members and Morehead Students who came out to learn more about H.R. 3717 and how it can help families in crisis. 

'If only they had treated him before', by Wayne Drash, CNN

"Amy Bruce lost her life trying to help her son receive treatment for his brain disease. How many more families must endure these horrible tragedies before we realize that assisted outpatient or court ordered treatment (AOT) is NOT the last resort. Suicide or homicide is!" 

By Wayne Drash, CNN
Video by Brandon Ancil, CNN.

Photographs by John Nowak, CNN

When Will Bruce killed his mother, he believed she was an al Qaeda agent. His father wrested hope from the tragedy -- by seeing that his son finally got treatment. After seven years in a psychiatric hospital, Will is taking his first steps toward freedom.

Thanks to Wayne Drash for sharing Joe Bruce’s tragedy with such compassion! Read the entire story here: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/08/health/mental-illness-treatment/

"Court ordered treatment is not our last resort. Homicide or suicide is."

For my wife, Amy Bruce

by Joe Bruce

CARATUNK, Maine – On June 20, 2006, I opened the door of our simple home here on Main Street in western Maine to find the limp, bloody body of my beautiful wife Amy, my closest friend in the world and the love of my life. In a deep state of psychosis, our then 24-year-old son, William, had killed her with a hatchet, thinking she was an al-Qaeda agent.

Two months earlier, on April 20, 2006, Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, Me., discharged Will, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, three weeks shy of the 90-day involuntary commitment period ordered by our local District Court. Will had a history of violence, but he was released from Riverview without the benefit of any kind of antipsychotic drugs.

The days, months, and years following Amy’s death marked the worst time of my life, but it was also the start of something most unexpected: a journey into openness, emerging most recently this week with a CNN investigation into our family’s story, “If only they had treated him before,” by CNN senior producer Wayne Drash.

Read the entire story here: http://treatmentbeforetragedy.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/for-my-wife-amy-bruce/

State Supreme Court rules psychiatric boarding unlawful!!

August 7, 2014 at 9:25 AM

State Supreme Court rules psychiatric boarding unlawful

Posted by Lynn Thompson

The Washington State Supreme Court ruled Thursday that boarding psychiatric patients temporarily in hospital emergency rooms and acute care centers because there isn’t space at certified psychiatric treatment facilities is unlawful.

The court ruled unanimously that patients held temporarily in settings that don’t provide individualized psychiatric treatment violates the state’s Involuntary Treatment Act.

“It’s always been inhumane not to provide treatment, now it’s clearly illegal,” said Ross Hunter, D-Medina, Chair of the State House Appropriations Committee. Hunter said the state will have to respond sooner than the Legislature can act, which might not be until a new budget can be approved next spring.

He said the state must add short-term capacity by opening new beds at Western and Eastern State Hospitals, but should also try to add less-expensive beds at community treatment facilities which also allows patients to remain closer to home with more continuity of care. Hunter said beds at state psychiatric hospitals can cost $600 a day while the care in a community clinic may cost half as much and be eligible for Medicaid reimbursement.

He said the state’s mental health treatment system faced devastating cuts during the recession and is now seeing the consequences in the big increase in psychiatric patients boarded in hospital emergency rooms or acute care centers rather than certified psychiatric treatment facilities.

He noted that a state task force made up of representatives from the Department of Social and Health Services, King County, the Governor’s Office and the King County Executive’s Office is working on the issue.

“We don’t know how many patients we’re talking about because the hospitals don’t keep good data on boarding, but the cost to the state could be in the tens of millions,” Hunter said.

A lawyer representing mentally ill clients praised Thursday’s ruling and said it could lead to better treatment.

“The decision is the court recognizing that when our clients are involuntarily committed, they need to be placed in a setting where they can get proper psychiatric treatment,” said Mike De Felice, who supervises public defenders who represent involuntarily committed patients in King County.

He said certified psychiatric care facilities can provide monitoring of medications, staff trained to treat mentally ill patients and a therapeutic setting where clients can be diagnosed and treated to improve their condition.

“If a client is strapped to an emergency  bed rather than being in a psychiatric treatment environment, it can be traumatic for the patient and can certainly delay healing,” De Felice said. Effective outpatient treatment can also be less costly, he said.

Read more:State Supreme Court rules psychiatric boarding unlawful

‘Boarding’ mentally ill becoming epidemic in state

Kirkland hospital to change procedures for ‘boarding’ mentally ill

58 COMMENTS | More in GENERAL NEWS, GOVERNMENT, HEALTH | Topics: MENTALLY ILL, PSYCHIATRIC BOARDING, SUPREME COURT

Johnson, Murphy lead briefing on Medicaid exclusions at the Congressional Homelessness Caucus - hosted by the Treatment Advocacy Center

Johnson, Murphy lead briefing on Medicaid exclusions

WASHINGTON— Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson and Congressman 
Tim Murphy, in conjunction with the Congressional Homelessness 
Caucus and hosted by the Treatment Advocacy Center, led a congressional 
briefing on the Institutions for Mental Diseases (IMD) Exclusion to Medicaid. 

“The IMD exclusion has inadvertently caused our jails and prisons to become warehouses for the severely mentally ill,” Congresswoman Johnson said to the gathered crowd. “Unfortunately, the consequences of non-treatment are visible in our communities. People with untreated psychiatric illness now make up one-third of our estimated 600,000 homeless population; and in 2012, there were an estimated 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness in prisons and jails across the nation. Patients with mental illness need increased access to psychiatric beds to have a real chance of recovery. They don’t need to be left out on the street or incarcerated, because their illness is never treated. We must work to eliminate barriers to better mental health treatment for our underserved minority communities.”