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

Testimony

Valerie Fox
Marlton, NJ

Before the
Governor’s Task Force on Mental Health

January 5, 2005

I'll start my testimony and I do want to thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I am speaking today about what I believe is a serious flaw in the system. My credential for speaking about this flaw is my life experience. I am a consumer of mental health services.

MR. DAVISON: Take your time.

MS. FOX: Thank you. It's just – I am speaking about the need in a good mental health system of care for assisted treatment or what some call outpatient commitment. I know fine agencies that are speaking against this treatment because they feel it is an intrusion on the civil rights of individuals. However, I say what of the rights of the mentally ill persons who do not know reality, who are living on streets and sleeping on floors and eating very little, persons who are being victimized or who victimize because their auditory and visual hallucinations are condoning tragic acts to them and from them.

I say again what of the civil rights of these persons who do not have the free will to make rational decisions, who are dying on the street and, in the least, who are malnourished and isolated.

My credential for my belief that something is needed for this population of mentally ill, those who do not believe they are ill and need medication, is that I did fall through the cracks. I wasn't acting out toward others, myself or property, yet I was living on the streets eating at most one hamburger a day, sleeping in vacant buildings with my "voices" my only company.

I am one of the lucky ones. I did not die. My family members did not die before we could again reunite. It was over a two-year period. But they could have died. This "fight" against helping those who cannot make rational decisions for themselves is against logic. It is not humane and it is most of all not helping persons who cannot help themselves.

In closing, for those of you who do not relate to hearing voices let me ask you if your mother, brother, sister or father had Alzheimer's Disease to the point that he or she could not make rational decisions. I feel certain you would want your loved one in sheltered care. Why not give a person living in a psychotic state the same humane care? I wish when I had been homeless and severely mentally ill, schizophrenia is my diagnosis, that someone had mandated to me I either take medication in the community or I would have to go to a hospital. I believe I would have taken the medication and not endured the great dangers of being vulnerable and exposed on the streets.

Thank you very much for listening.

FIND OUT MORE
New Jersey main page | Advocates page

general resources | legal resources | medical resources | briefing papers | state activity   
hospital closures | preventable tragedies | press room | search | home