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Testimony

The Honorable Senator Gerald Cardinale
Cresskill, NJ

Before the
Governor’s Task Force on Mental Health

January 5, 2005

Thank you very much, Commissioner Davison, all of the members of the panel.

I know and I've listened and I believe you have quite a wide mandate and quite a wide scope. I'm here to talk about one aspect which has caught my interest as a legislator over many years, hearing from families in my district who have a particular problem. And you've heard already from I believe it was Ms. Fox who indicated that she is one who has benefited from having been treated and gotten out of that syndrome of in and out of the hospital, perhaps in and out of jail, and certainly disabled.

Kendra's Law is working great in New York State. Other similar laws are working well in other states. And what this does is it enables patients who are so disabled by their illness that they cannot understand that they are ill, it enables those folks to be treated. We have a system in New Jersey, unfortunately, which assists those who are unable to recognize that they are ill to resist being treated. We're not doing those folks any service by doing that. We're not doing our society any service because these folks get worse and they get worse and they become a burden on society and sometimes they create great problems for their families and great problems for strangers. And Kendra was a stranger who got thrown under some subway tracks by one of these folks who had been in and out of the hospital and woke up New York State and they passed a law to deal with this problem.

We've introduced such a bill in the New Jersey Senate. It's S-1640. I circulated that bill among my colleagues and I want to just share with you that almost to a person they told me they had come across, either through constituents or friends or family, a like circumstance to those families that encouraged me to put this law forward, so it's a widespread problem; it's not an isolated problem.

And we can do something about this.

It has become apparent to me, from the reading I've done and from what I've heard from various groups, that with in many cases minimal outpatient treatment these folks can lead normal lives. Perhaps not all of them, but they all get a little better, and many of them become just like you and me. And all it takes is that they receive a few pills. And many times it's not a financial problem. It's not that they can't afford it, it's that they resist it because they don't understand that they are ill.

I'm here today, my primary purpose is to encourage you because I've heard from -- I've heard from the acting Governor and his staff that if this committee recommends the passage of this bill and Senator Codey in his role as a senator is a co-plan sponsor of this bill with me -- that this committee is going to have a great deal of bearing on whether that becomes law in New Jersey and whether we join the forty other states who have taken a more enlightened role in helping mentally ill folks, particularly schizophrenics, particularly those who are paranoid, get the kind of treatment that they need and we stop assisting them avoiding the treatment.

I thank you very, very much for coming to Bergen County and for doing the work that you're doing and you are a unique group in that you have a very tight deadline for reporting and I certainly hope that you get out your report even faster than that deadline.

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