This year Michigan lawmakers can prevent hundreds of tragedies with one compassionate act. Shortly after the 1-year anniversary of Kevin Heisinger's death, his family and state legislators are planning to ask the state of Michigan for a law to protect citizens who have an untreated, severe mental illness and members of their communities. "Kevin's Law" would support treatment intervention before someone becomes dangerous, safeguarding the individual and the public.

Individuals who have an untreated, severe mental illness commit more than 1,000 homicides a year in the United States. When taking medication, these people are no more dangerous than the general population. Unfortunately, because mental illness prevents some who have it from understanding they are sick, many refuse treatment. The violent acts that result from lack of medication are preventable tragedies.

Brian Williams of Ypsilanti, the man who killed Heisinger, was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager. He lived on a roller coaster - in and out of institutions and on and off of medications. In one week last August, police arrested Williams for brandishing a large knife in a diner, dealt with him for walking naked through town and confronted him about his strange behavior in a convenience store. But nobody monitored his treatment or lack thereof.

On Aug. 17, 2000, Williams, then 40, beat Heisinger to death with his fists in the men's rest room of the Kalamazoo bus station. Heisinger, 24, was on his way home to Chicago from orientation at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. When his bus stopped in Kalamazoo, he lost his life because another person's mental illness was not being treated. Williams, who was not taking medication, said that voices made him beat the young man to death.

To honor Heisinger's memory, his family and State Reps. Virg Bernero, D-Lansing, and Tom George, R-Portage, will demand passage of Kevin's Law, which would permit court-ordered outpatient treatment for mentally ill people who are least able to help themselves or most likely to present a risk to others.

At least 40 percent of the 4.5 million people in the United States who are diagnosed with either schizophrenia or manic-depression, the two severest forms of mental illness, do not and cannot realize they are sick because the illness affects their brain's frontal-lobe function, which is necessary to make that determination. Because they do not know they are sick, they refuse medication and often deteriorate.

In Michigan, there are more people who have a severe and persistent mental illness who are homeless or in jail than there are in psychiatric hospitals. They need treatment, and many aren't getting it.

Current Michigan law limits what families, caregivers, and mental health professionals can do to intervene, and many with mental illnesses end up homeless, in jail, or victims of violence or suicide.

Kevin's Law would allow courts to order intensive outpatient care for the small percentage of individuals who are either most in need of help or who are the greatest risk to the public. These individuals would receive supervised and intensive treatment in the community and be monitored to ensure treatment compliance until they are again capable of maintaining their own psychiatric care.

Forty-one states now have laws allowing some form of assisted outpatient treatment. In study after study and in state after state, court orders have increased treatment compliance. The most comprehensive and respected study on its use found that the program, when used for more than six months and combined with routine mental health services, reduced the violence occurrences by half and reduced hospital admissions by 57 percent.

Current Michigan law prevents the state from intervening to provide care to individuals with severe mental illnesses until they exhibit dangerous behavior. In Williams' case, as with so many, that intervention came too late. With Kevin's Law in place, families, caregivers, and mental health professionals will have the tools to secure needed treatment for individuals incapacitated by mental illness before they become a danger to themselves and others.

The day Heisinger died, his screams of anguish went unheeded by other midday travelers in the busy bus station.

Nobody helped him, nobody stopped the attack.

Today the people of Michigan have a second chance to hear his voice and make a difference - by ensuring that those who have a severe mental illness receive consistent and long-term treatment.

For more information on Kevin's Law and mental illness, visit www.psychlaws.org.

E. Fuller Torrey is president and Mary Zdanowicz is executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center), a nonprofit organization in Arlington, Va., that works to eliminate barriers to treating severe mental illness.

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