To the Editors:
Last year in August, I traveled to New York to visit and spend some time with my 16-year-old son, who lives there with his father. My son was facing criminal charges (still does) and I thought that he was doing drugs. To make a long story short, on September 20th, we took him to an emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital and he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In the very moment that the staff member told me that my son was psychotic, I instantly thanked God in my mind for finally giving me the answer for his "odd" behavior. Next morning I went to Manhattan to buy a book about the subject, a couple of days later I joined NAMI, continued reading more books and anything related to mental illness until I read your summer 2006 issue of New York City Voices and especially the article from Carlos Sabater who wrote something while he was incarcerated.
His article made me cry because it showed me the reality of my biggest fear: that even though my son has schizophrenia, he can still go to jail. My boy has been charged as an adult and one year in Rikers Island is so far the best deal he has been offered. I also cried because I felt sad for Mr. Sabater's very unfortunate situation in the moment he was writing the letter, and my maternal instincts came out.
Months later I am back in South Carolina where I live with my husband and I read on the Internet another article from Carlos Sabater in New York City Voices, where he talks about how he is trying to pick up the pieces and go on with his life now that he is out of jail.
It took me a long time to write this email because my writing is not very good (especially in English), but I would like to know how he is doing and offer him my most honest and sincere friendship filled with good intentions.
Marta Elena Chacin
Via the Internet
The Virginia Tech Massacre
To the Editors:
The Virginia Tech story is becoming more and more upsetting as information is revealed about the background of the killer. What appears to be clear is that the killer needed a serious intervention from family, friends, roommates, teachers, school administrators, police, judges, and of course, psychotherapists and psychiatrists. A hospital stay of more than 48 hours would have been in order, but more importantly, somebody—indeed everybody—had to convince this kid that he needed to further educate himself psychologically and philosophically. The world is a tough place. The killer needed to know how to cope with this reality, instead of becoming a danger to himself and to others. Yes, there are “rich snobs” in the world. You have to learn to deal with this issue. You must learn to engage these so-called snobs, if you can, but if you can’t, you must learn to leave them alone. And if you have frustrations about them, you express them to your therapist and/or in your art. What was seriously lacking in this young man’s life was a quality psychiatric team and a sound education in the words and ideas of Martin Luther King, who fought evil, injustice, cruelty and whatever else he disliked about the world, nonviolently. The “lone ranger” attitude of the killer developed partly from his inability to properly deal with injustice, which is related to his worship of violence. His love of violent video games and guns and sadistic solutions to serious problems indicates that he was not properly educated. There are two things I think need to be brought to college campuses: 1) Respect for and familiarity with psychotherapy and those who use it; 2) Knowledge of what Martin Luther King stood for and how he stood for it. It may sound hokey, but it’s an undeniable truth.
Craig R. Bayer
Manhattan, New York
Back at Work
To the Editors:
The last time I wrote to New York City Voices I said that I had recovered and was now looking for a job. It’s not that I’ve never worked before, but the last paying job I had was about 5 years ago. The reason I lost it was that I got sick at work and started yelling at my supervisor. After that, I landed in jail for three weeks (for yelling in the wrong place) and then landed in the state hospital for another two months. Since then, I’ve laid low working at a volunteer job at a community center where all my co-workers are social workers. When I yelled at my supervisor there, they understood that it was just stress and anger and I went home for the day. This would happen every three months or so, then, about two years ago it stopped. I guess it was a combination of good treatment and a fear of ending up in jail again.
Then, this past December, my supervisor asked if I’d like if I’d like to be paid for a project I had been doing as a volunteer. It was only part-time, but the job paid well and I felt I could finally show social security that I was pulling my own weight, or at least, some of it. I hate being dependent on the government for my livelihood and this job not only boosted my bank account, but now I am doing something for real money. Now when someone asks me what I do, I can say “I’m a case worker,” which makes me feel a part of the working world again.
There is something about work, about being busy and feeling that you’re needed that gives me (and anyone) a confidence boost that is vital to who you are as a person. I think without work, without a purpose in life, without motivation, we would just languish and eventually come undone.
Bryan Clampitt
Via the Internet
The Harsh Realities of Kendra’s Law
To the Editors:
The proliferation of mobile crisis units and Albany’s official stance on “Kendra’s Law” have created a situation where mental health consumers are locked away or forcibly committed frequently based on unjustified hearsay.
New laws concerning the confinement of sex offenders to state psychiatric facilities only make official practices that have been common for many years. Often, sex offenders are incarcerated in New York State psychiatric facilities long after their prison sentence has expired. Many sex offenders fall into the category of “mental health consumer,” since they have a history of psychiatric treatment.
Do these new laws really protect vulnerable citizens from sexual predators or do they simply legitimize things that have been going on in the system for years?
In contrast, there seems to be no laws that increase penalties for psychiatric abuse committed upon mental health consumers by treatment providers. Crimes ranging from staff beatings to sex abuse are largely ignored, although the crimes rank in the thousands every year in New York State.
For many years, any citizen can have the power to commit another person [to psychiatric treatment] with a simple call to the police or an ambulance. Kendra’s Law only underscores this faulty empowerment of the cruel and heartless, and leaves the mental health consumer feeling unprotected and alone, condemned for feeling such human emotions as anger or fear that anyone would feel in that predicament.
Incorrect diagnoses of consumers and the related problem of overmedicating are often the results. An intervention by a mobile crisis unit more often than not makes a consumer the victim rather than the alleged perpetrator of a crime.
Anthony E. Perrault
Via the Internet
Non-Profits That Exploit Us
To the Editors:
Your paper is dead silent on these “non-profit” groups for the disabled like Fountain House that exploit members and trap them in poverty. Fountain House gives members dead-end, poverty-wage “jobs” that lead nowhere and hates anyone who criticizes.
Anonymous
New York City
Down with Involuntary Outpatient Commitment!
To the Editors:
In New York State, the game is known as Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) or Kendra’s Law or Mental Hygiene Law § 9.60 or, as it was originally called, Involuntary Outpatient Commitment (IOC).
The U.S. Supreme Court in Humphrey v. Cady (1972) termed IOC “a massive curtailment of liberty.” The Court in Specht v. Patterson (1967) emphasized that “involuntary commitment to a mental hospital, like involuntary confinement of an individual for any reason, is a deprivation of liberty which the State cannot accomplish without due process of law.” In O’Connor v. Donaldson (1975) the Court found “no constitutional basis for confining such persons involuntarily if they are dangerous to no one and can live safely in freedom.”
The highest court of New York State, the Court of Appeals…passed Rivers v. Katz (1986) and ruled that the administrative process [for IOC]…was constitutionally inadequate because there was no opportunity for judicial review prior to forced medication. In other words, it was illegal to force consumers to take medication without first getting a court order to do so...parasites like Dr. E. Fuller Torrey of the Treatment Advocacy Center and most members of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) began to act. They needed an IOC law to hang their hats on.
After the Kendra Webdale tragedy of 1999, Torrey and company managed to push [the IOC law known as] Kendra’s Law through the NYS Assembly with the help of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Assemblywoman Elizabeth Connelly, and the New York City Department of Mental Health.
The New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS) said this about the Spitzer proposal: “Under the Spitzer bill, almost anyone—a roommate, family member, significant other, provider—can initiate the process of involuntary outpatient commitment. Once initiated, the individual is forced to cooperate with the process. If committed to outpatient treatment, the individual must either participate in forced treatment, including forced medicating, or face inpatient commitment. In addition, any provider included in the outpatient commitment plan is court-ordered to monitor and report any suspicious behavior—in essence destroying the trust that is the basis of any therapeutic relationship, and transforming providers into mental health sheriffs.”
Sal Branciforte
Staten Island, New York