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Tampa Tribune

December 28, 2003

Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

EDITORIAL
Let judges help people before tragedy strikes

To read the bill and contact legislators, go to TBO.com and click on Links We Mentioned. Then click on the Baker Act links.; To read "An Act Of Desperation," a Tribune series on the Baker Act and children, go to TBO.com and type in the keyword Baker Act.

In early March, David Houseman filed papers to have his brother, Alan, a Hyde Park resident diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, committed to a hospital - for the fourteenth time.

Alan, it seems, refused to take the medications that helped him.

But before he could be picked up, Alan attacked a police officer with her own baton. In self-defense, she shot and killed him.

"Sadly, this was only the final time the system failed our brother," David Houseman and his wife, Ceida, wrote in the Tribune.

The Housemans' story is repeated often by families coping with a mentally ill relative or friend who refuses to acknowledge the illness. These people watch their loved ones deteriorate but can do little about it.

They know that eventually, when the patient becomes an imminent threat to himself or others, he can be committed under the Baker Act.

Eventually.

And that's the problem. Today there are four times more people with mental illnesses in local jails than in psychiatric hospitals because they don't meet the statutory definition needed for hospitalization. Moreover, many of these inmates, if properly treated, would pose no threat to anyone.

For the second year, the Florida Sheriffs Association and mental health advocates have proposed legislation to allow court-ordered outpatient treatment, something that's permitted in 41 states.

The reforms would allow judges to intervene early. If a mentally ill person refuses to take his drugs and has a history with the police, the judge could order that person to take his medication. The hope is that getting hauled before a judge will get his attention.

If that doesn't work, the judge could send him to an outpatient treatment program. In the end, a judge cannot force someone to take their drugs, but the judicial threat just might keep people from deteriorating into a dangerous mental condition.

Consequences Reduced

During the last session of Florida's Legislature, we cautioned that the proposed reforms could pose too great a burden on the judicial system and suggested setting up a pilot project to show whether the proposals would succeed. We have reconsidered.

Statistics from other states with similar laws show that patients ordered into treatment programs have stayed on their medications and out of hospitals and jails.

Take New York, which passed Kendra's Law after a young woman visiting Manhattan was pushed in front of a subway car by a deranged man off his medications. Kendra's Law allows judges to order people into treatment. Since it took effect in 1999, the need for hospitalizations has dropped by 63 percent. Homelessness among the mentally ill has fallen by 55 percent and arrests by 75 percent.

Moreover, the burden on New York judges and those in other states hasn't proven to be too much.

"[W ]e are dealing with these cases one way or another," Wisconsin trial judge Ralph Johnson told the sheriffs association. "That is, if we do not handle the cases on the civil docket for court-ordered treatment, we will have to deal with them on the criminal docket when crimes are committed, often as a result of the untreated symptoms of their illness."

Indeed, as Seminole County Sheriff Donald Eslinger puts it, "There is a serious downside to not adopting the Baker Act reforms: ... continued arrests, homelessness, victimization, violence and suicide by people who, because of their mental illness, do not recognize their own need for treatment."

The changes should not cost the state more money because the people who would otherwise have been in jail at state expense would be placed into treatment programs.

Saving A Life

The Housemans are convinced such a program could have saved their brother's life. He would have taken his medication if ordered by a judge, Ceida Houseman insists. She remembers him as a wonderful man when he took his medicine.

"We knew it was a bad system, we knew that a lot of people were affected, but we didn't know that the law could be changed to deal with people like my brother-in-law," she said.

When Alan stopped taking care of himself and they tried to help, they became the villains. Alan would love them or loathe them, depending on whether he took his medicine.

"After he was killed, we heard from so many people, calling us to console us and asking, "How do we help ourselves?"' she recalled.

They can help by contacting their legislators and urging them to support Baker Act reform.