General Resources / Legal Resources / Medical Resources / Briefing Papers / State Activity    
Hospital Closures / Preventable Tragedies / Press Room / Search Our Site / Home

Tampa Tribune

April 6, 2003

Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

OPED
Florida's Baker Act fails mentally ill and their families

by Ceida and David Houseman

Alan Mark Houseman was killed in an encounter with a law enforcement officer March 8. Alan had schizophrenia and was off his medication. The day before he died, we had yet again filed papers to have him committed against his will under Florida's Baker Act.

Sadly, this was only the final time the system failed our brother.

Florida law does not allow court-ordered outpatient treatment - something that is available in 41 other states. And the state law is interpreted as requiring someone to be imminently dangerous before the courts can intervene.

In our case, that meant that the many times we knew Alan was deteriorating - including only a month before he died, when he threatened David's life - we would call for help to no avail.

More times than we can count, we never even got as far as a Baker Act order. Over and over we reached out for help and were told Alan couldn't be committed because he wasn't an imminent danger to himself or others.

The times that he did meet the standard and was brought in under the Baker Act, the law permitted Alan - someone who was floridly delusional - to check himself out and go home. More than a dozen times we watched with relief as he was taken in, and with horror as he was released with no order to stay on medication.

After Alan died, we were saddened to discover that no part of our tragedy is unusual or uncommon.

• Alan was not the first person with a severe mental illness to stop taking medication because he didn't think he was sick. About half of those with severe brain diseases like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder lack the full capacity to understand that they have the disease. Studies have shown that such individuals will not voluntarily utilize psychiatric services, no matter how attractive those services are. 
• Alan was not the first person to be killed in an encounter with law enforcement. In fact, people with severe mental illnesses are four times more likely to be killed in an encounter with police than people who aren't ill. 
• Alan was not the first person to be repeatedly Baker Acted. Approximately 7,500 adults each year in Florida are taken into custody under the law two or more times.

Like so many other families touched by these terrible statistics, we tried to be the squeaky wheel to get Alan the help he needed. We called the police. We went down in person to talk to people who wouldn't return our phone calls. We kept in close contact with his doctors and caseworkers.

We would plead with them: Alan is deteriorating, we know the signs so well. Eventually he will hurt himself. Eventually he will be Baker Acted. Eventually he will be in your system anyway. But in waiting for that day to come, Alan will be far sicker and harder to help than he is now.

People like Alan overburden the system. They use up a huge share of services - in police visits, ambulance costs, emergency room services, court time. And because they can't be compelled to stay in treatment, they cycle in and out, never getting better, sucking up an escalating quantity of resources.

Anyone who has ever balanced a checkbook can do the math: It is more expensive to repeatedly use a service poorly than to use it once effectively. In 2002, one individual alone accounted for 41 Baker Act examinations at an approximate cost of $81,000 - not including court costs, law enforcement resources, or long-term treatment.

After Alan died, one of his friends, another man who has a severe mental illness, asked David a question that has haunted us ever since. "If someone kills me," he asked, "will you stand up for me, too?"

We are trying to stand up for him now, while he is alive, as we tried to stand up for Alan.

Current law keeps families from helping those they love until after tragedy has struck. Florida legislators should stand up for them now. Not because it will save money, although it will. Not because it will increase public safety, though it will. But because people like Alan deserve to be helped - before they end up on the street, in jail, or in the morgue.

Ceida and David Houseman live in Clearwater. Alan Houseman lived in Tampa.

READ MORE
Florida activities