COALITION
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April 16, 2008
Laura’s Law Offers Solution to
California’s Psychiatric Bed Shortage
Assisted Outpatient Treatment could help prevent patients from
entering psychiatric units, emergency rooms, jails and homeless shelters
Sacramento, CA – Responding to the state’s severe shortage of public psychiatric beds, advocates from California’s mental health community referred to a new report which affirms the need for Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) laws, like Laura’s Law, to help divert many people suffering from severe mental illness out of psychiatric beds and into community-based treatment. The report can be found at: http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/Reportbedshortage.htm
According to a new report recently released by the Treatment Advocacy Center, The Shortage of Hospital Beds for Mentally Ill Persons, the number of psychiatric beds in public hospitals has fallen dramatically across California and the nation with the average state now dedicating only 17 beds for mentally ill patients for every 100,000 residents. Nearly one in five people living in California have some form of mental illness. In the Los Angeles County jail system alone, an estimated 60 percent of the inmates suffer from mental illness.
The report noted that because there are so few beds available, individuals with severe psychiatric disorders who need to be hospitalized are often unable to get admitted. Those who are admitted are often discharged prematurely and without a treatment plan. The consequences of the radical reduction in psychiatric hospital beds are evidenced in the increase in homelessness, number of mentally ill persons in jails and prisons, persons with mental illness in emergency rooms, and the increase in violence, including homicides in untreated individuals.
“The results of this report are dire and the failure to provide care for the most seriously mentally ill individuals is disgraceful,” said lead author, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, president of the Treatment Advocacy Center. “Our communities are paying a high price for our failure to treat those with severe and persistent mental illness, and those not receiving treatment are suffering severely. In addition, untreated persons with severe mental illnesses have become major problems in our homeless shelters, jails, public parks, public libraries, and emergency rooms and are responsible for at least 5 percent of all homicides and large portion of all suicides.”
It has been seven years since 19-year-old Laura Wilcox was shot to death at a Nevada County mental health clinic by Scott Harlan Thorpe, a man with paranoid schizophrenia who consistently refused treatment. Five years ago, California passed Laura’s Law in her name, allowing counties to create programs with the ability to provide court-ordered community mental health treatment to people with severe mental illnesses who would otherwise be lost to the symptoms of their illnesses. Despite impressive data from other states on the effectiveness of similar assisted outpatient treatment laws, most California’s counties have refused to implement.
“Assisted outpatient treatment is an extremely effective tool to care for these individuals and allows the sickest patients to get real care, removing them from the revolving door of repeated emergency room visits, hospitalizations and arrests that are so costly to local governments, hospitals, communities and the individuals themselves,” said Carla Jacobs, co-coordinator of the California Treatment Advocacy Coalition. “It is puzzling and downright immoral that counties are not utilizing the law.”
New York’s assisted outpatient treatment law, which Laura’s Law is patterned after, showed tremendous success and impressive results in its first five years. Statewide data from Kendra’s Law conclusively demonstrates that assisted outpatient treatment significantly reduces the severest consequences for participants who formerly had rejected treatment:
“There’s no question we need more public psychiatric beds, but the consequences of the severe bed shortage can also be improved with wide-spread utilization of AOT,” said Dr. Torrey. “Assisted outpatient treatment is a successful way to treat people with severe mental illnesses in the community and has been repeatedly proven to reduce psychiatric hospitalizations by more than 70 percent.”
Mental health advocates in California are currently working with local governments and the state legislature to get Laura’s Law implemented in counties throughout the state.
“Assisted outpatient treatment offers a much-needed, less restrictive outpatient alternative to costly inpatient hospitalization for individuals who do not engage in treatment, even after multiple attempts by service providers to reach them,” said Randall Hagar, director of governmental affairs at the California Psychiatric Association. “Laura’s Law offers local governments an innovative solution to address this dangerous bed shortage.”
The California Treatment Advocacy Coalition (www.lauraslaw.net) is an alliance of Californians who promote laws, policies, and practices for the fair treatment of people with severe mental illness.
The Treatment Advocacy Center (www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental illnesses. TAC promotes laws, policies, and practices for the delivery of psychiatric care and supports the development of innovative treatments for and research into the causes of severe and persistent psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
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