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Harrisburg State Hospital Closing
Said the devil: 'You're no good'
Editorial, courtesy The
Patriot-News
Friday, January 07, 2005
The devil, as he had be fore, told him he was no good and that he
should kill himself. Acting upon the mixed-up impulses of his ravaged
brain, he set his mattress on fire and lay down on the flames. Mercifully,
he was rescued by his caretakers at the Harrisburg State Hospital
before he was burned.
The young man was then removed from his long-term residence at the
Harrisburg State Hospital and he was jailed. It has been over one
year since his suicide attempt and he still remains in jail. He
remains in jail because there is no psychiatric facility that is
available to take him, according to his county social worker.
He is not the only severely mentally ill person our system is failing
due to the lack of available treatment facilities. Recently, another
young man wound up virtually abandoned by our current system. This
young man is also profoundly impaired by paranoid schizophrenia.
His family, finding no facility that could or would take him, was
forced to set him up in an apartment courtesy of low-income housing,
Social Security and medical assistance, which included a social
worker who was to supposed to be able to oversee his case and provide
resources for his care.
He had a history of being noncompliant with his medications. Predictably,
when he went off of his medications, his substantial paranoia drove
him to physically defend himself from a nonexistent threat. In doing
so, he met the criteria for involuntarily commitment and he was
committed to a private hospital. Following a very short stay at
the hospital, he was released. UNFORTUNATELY, HE was not released
into the care of a treatment facility because there were no openings
for someone with his level of non-compliance. Where did he wind
up? He wound up with a cab ride to the Bethesda Mission.
Without sufficient long-term treatment facilities, our private hospitals
become revolving-door care for the seriously ill. Our private hospitals
are not designed for, nor are they typically reimbursed for the
lengthier periods of care required by the seriously mentally ill.
As a result, through no fault of the hospitals, too many patients
are released from the care of the hospital before there is much
hope of even short-term success outside of an institutional setting.
WITH NO appropriate facility available for longer-term care, these
same patients quickly decompensate and wind up again meeting the
guidelines for commitment. Between hospitalizations, some of these
patients wind up in horrible situations. One such patient, in a
fit of mania, wound up threatening police at knifepoint within two
weeks after release from a hospital.
The very real people mentioned above, and the many more like them,
need improved long-term care options. However, shutting down less
than ideal institutions before providing real and meaningful alternatives
will only doom even more of the sick to our jails, to our streets
and worse ...
NANCY PRESCOTT of Lower Paxton Twp. is an attorney who, until recently,
had represented the mentally ill who have been involuntarily committed.
Copyright 2005 PennLive.com.
All Rights Reserved.
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