On January 4th of 2012, Jeremy Weaver told the story of a mentally ill man called "Sam".
Texas' failure to fund mental health treatment leaves hundreds stranded in jails around the stateI know of less extreme but similar incident. The mentally ill brother of a friend was jailed for a month , and then simply released without shoes, with a broken arm from a county jail last year. No one was held accountable, nobody cared except for my friend.
Nearly four years ago, "Sam's" paranoia had grown so intense that he believed spies followed him in the shadows everywhere he went. His house, car, motorcycle, workplace, were all bugged, he believed. "I was in a very bad place, psychologically," said Sam, who asked that his name not be used for this story, by phone from the Kerrville State Hospital last month. "I thought everyone was after me."After a number of increasingly intense psychotic episodes, those delusions reached a breaking point. In 2008, he set fire to his motorcycle in the driveway of his parents' small San Antonio cleaning business. The fire quickly spread, destroying his parents' shop. It took over a year and a half inside the Bexar County jail, much of it in solitary confinement, and a suicide attempt before Sam was transferred to one of Texas' 10 mental hospitals for intensive treatment for what he later learned was a schizoaffective disorder. "I really thought I would die in that jail cell," he said last month.
Back in the 90's the cry was "de-institutionalization"- send the mentally ill back to their communiuties. Close the big state mental illness warehouses. Oh, of course the local jurisdications would pony up the money for the decentralized community treatment centers that would replace the big warehouses. It never happened of course.
The long nightmare for the weak and poor in Texas which started in the 90's has continued under the Bush-Perry dynasty low these many years. By 2011, the National Alliance for Mental Illness ranked Texas dead last in funding mental health services. Those awaiting committment to a state mental health after being "declared incompetent and unable to participate in their own defense, [can] languish on a growing waiting list that can take months to clear."
The horror stories are endless.
Texas' Republican leaders reaction was sad , if predictable. First they froze funding , letting inflation eat away at real per capita funding. That way nobody could claim they actually cut funding to these powerless Texans. Then they made the advocates for the mentally ill sue them in court.
Texas' failure to fund mental health treatment leaves hundreds stranded in jails around the stateI blogged about a welfare mom who had to win not one but 3 court judgements to get her sons enrolled in the healthcare program for the poor. Her sons were in college before Texas finally acquiesced.
Disability Rights Texas is now embarking on year six of its court battle over funding to house mentally ill defendants waiting for treatment in jails across the state. Beth Mitchell, an attorney with Disability Rights, said the organization sued state health officials in 2006 hoping to force their hand and make them cut the time mentally ill defendants are allowed to wait in jail for treatment.
Here we are in June 2013 and I read this from Andrea Ball (Jun 08, 2013) of Austin American-Statesman :
As Medicaid investigators threaten for the seventh time to freeze federal money to Austin's institution for people with intellectual disabilities, officials say change is coming to the perennially troubled facility.A story about one state faciility that stands in for them all.
The state just hired the Austin State Supported Living Center's fourth leader since 2010 to overhaul an institution where investigators say residents have suffered through substandard medical care, flawed treatment and serious neglect. Matt McCue's expertise as a national consultant on improving institutions will bring a fresh eye to the persistent problems, officials say.
But Charles Bratcher -- the last administrator brought in to clean house -- said the facility's new leader is likely to face the same quagmire he did: crumbling infrastructure, staffing shortages, inadequate training and a lack of guidance from high-level state bureaucrats.
Whether McCue gets the time and support he'll need remains to be seen. Bratcher was on the job for barely a year when he was forced to quit.
"I was told I'd be around regardless of what happened, even in the event of loss of (Medicaid) certification," Bratcher said in an interview with the American-Statesman. "Obviously, that didn't happen once the pressure was on and someone had to take a fall."
If it is true that we are defined by how we treat the powerless, that who we are is measured by what we do because it is right and not because we have to, then what does this say about our Republicans leaders? About we Texans?
