(Jan. 30, 2013) Connecticut – home to some of the more restrictive mental illness treatment laws in the country and to last month’s deadly Newtown rampage – is among the latest states to revisit the issue of assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Connecticut is one of only four states without a law authorizing involuntary treatment in the community. Testimony at a legislative hearing on possible changes to Connecticut’s mental health system included support for involuntary outpatient commitment to protect people with severe mental illness.
“The mental health community has failed to do its job in providing treatment to some of its most vulnerable citizens," said Kristina Ragosta, Treatment Advocacy Center senior legislative and policy counsel, in her testimony to the Bipartisan Task Force on Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety yesterday. “Our prisons and jails are overflowing with people suffering from severe mental illness as a result.”
Dr. Harold Schwartz, psychiatrist-in-chief at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living, said, “(I)n our efforts to protect autonomy we are acting to protect the decision making of individuals whose capacity for autonomous decision making has been severely impaired by mental illness (“Passionate pleas for better mental health care made during legislative hearing,” Jan. 29, Hartford Courant).
”The pro-AOT testimony came on the heels of a New Haven Registor editorial that opined, “The legislature needs to take up the assisted outpatient treatment legislation again this year for the good of the mentally ill who reject treatment and the public’s safety” (“Change law on mental health,” Jan. 12).
We couldn’t agree more. As Ragosta testified, “In Connecticut, a person with serious mental illness is twice as likely to be in jail or prison as in a psychiatric hospital bed.”
For more information on the need for AOT, listen to Kristina Ragosta debate the use of assisted outpatient treatment for Connecticut on WBUR’s “Here and Now.”
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