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Long road back
An advocate uses his troubled past to defend new legislation for the mentally ill

written by Ben Upham

Reprinted with permission.  Copyright 1999 Residence Publications.  All rights reserved.

Jonathan Stanley is the Assistant Director of the Treatment Advocacy Center and suffers from bipolar disorder. This account of his story was published in Residence Publications, September 1999.

Maybe it’s the city itself that drives people mad, but for some reason New York has more than its share of the mentally unbalanced—ranting, incoherent panhandlers are as much a symbol of Manhattan as the yellow cab or 42nd street.

Jonathan Stanley, at his worst moment, might have become one of them.

Stanley, now the Assistant Director of a nonprofit organization dealing with mental health legislation issues called [the] Treatment Advocacy Center, suffers from bi-polar disorder, a mood disorder characterized by episodes of mania and depression. He recalls his "moment of epiphany"—one cold day in January 1988, when he lost all sense of reality.

He was attending Williams College in Massachusetts, and had gone home to New York City on winter break. After leaving his girlfriend’s apartment, Stanley entered into a 72-hour psychotic episode, the culmination of several months of diagnosed but untreated manic depression.

Agents of Naval intelligence were spying on him, he became convinced, and to shield himself from their radioactive rays, he leaped up on a table in a Korean grocery and proceeded to disrobe.

"There was an old woman and her daughter that worked there. Needless to say, they weren’t too happy with that," he said, looking back on the incident with a hint of levity.

The police arrived. They handcuffed him and took him to a mental hospital, where he was put under watch for a mandatory three days. But the doctors told his parents that after those first 72 hours, there was nothing more they could do legally to keep him in treatment.

Luckily, Stanley had the sense of mind to sign a voluntary admission form. After eight weeks of treatment and medication, which he still takes religiously, he was released. That was almost 12 years ago, and he has been free from any serious reoccurrence.

Stanley’s faith in the treatment that got him out of his black hole led him to join the Treatment Advocacy Center when it was formed last year. The Center, located in Virginia, helped the effort to pass Kendra’s Law in New York.

Named after Kendra Webdale, a woman killed when she was pushed in front of a subway by a mentally ill man, the new law gives courts the authority to order the mentally ill into treatment, and allows relatives, police officers, roommates and doctors to petition the courts to do so. The bill was signed into law by Governor George Pataki last month, with a surprising amount of bipartisan support. Those forced into treatment must meet several requirements, including a history of violence or hospitalization, and only after an examination by a doctor.

The New York State Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue, saying Kendra’s Law tramples on the civil rights of the mentally ill. Others have concerns that the issue of mental health is too gray an area for the government, at the behest of strangers in law-enforcement or mental-health agencies, to strip civil rights from people.

Stanley counters that civil rights need to be taken in the context of what is best for the individual concerned.

"When people lose the ability to choose what’s right for themselves," he said, "civil rights end up protecting the right to be sick, the right to be homeless and the right to be in jail."

Isaac Brown is not so sure. Brown is the executive director of the Brooklyn Peer Advocacy Project and suffers from mental illness himself. He has also been featured in a subway ad campaign called "Treatment is Working" that highlights successful people with mental illness.

Brown disagrees with Stanley’s characterization of the way the state deals with mental illness. He said a psychotic episode is no different than any other medical emergency, but is treated differently.

"If someone has a heart attack, you don’t put them in handcuffs for six hours," he said, referring to the treatment he received after one of his psychotic episodes.

Besides infringing on the civil rights of those it would affect, Brown fears that the new law would have a negative effect on voluntary-treatment programs already in place.

Still, supporters like Stanley maintain that Kendra’s Law is an important step.

"God forbid I should ever become destabilized again," he said, expressing the distant but real fear that he could return to the state he was in before treatment. "But if I did, I hope there is something in place to get me in treatment, to get me back on my medication."

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