(May 7, 2015) Courts have ordered the state of Washington to make improvements to its failing mental health care system, including better services in jails and psychiatric hospitals (“Washington lawmakers work to fix mental health care system,” Spokesman-Review, May 3).
Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman issued a ruling against the state for failing to provide timely court-ordered competency evaluations, citing several cases in which mentally ill inmates decompensated and suffered unconscionable treatment while in solitary confinement.
“The state of Washington is violating the constitutional rights of some of its most vulnerable citizens,” Pechman said in her ruling.
“Jails are not hospitals, they are not designed as therapeutic environments, and they are not equipped to manage mental illness or keep those with mental illness from being victimized by the general population of inmates,” Pechman continued.
Pechman gave the state nine months to address the problem and appointed a monitor to oversee the process.
But some advocates have raised concerns about forcing more patients into an overwhelmed system that can’t provide proper care.
Numerous lawsuits have been filed recently against several of the state’s psychiatric hospitals, detailing extreme cases of overcrowding, or “warehousing.”
With only 18.1 hospital beds per 100,000 people, Washington fails to meet the minimum standard to provide adequate treatment for individuals with severe mental illness.
Moreover, the odds are 3.1 to 1 that a seriously mentally ill person will be incarcerated in jail or prison instead of admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Washington.
Clearly, the state has a lot of work to do and needs to rethink its revolving door system of shifting the most severely mentally ill from hospitals to jail cells.
Read our report “More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons than Hospitals: A Survey of the States“ to learn more.
To comment, visit our Facebook page.
Visit our blog archive to read all our recent posts.
Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman issued a ruling against the state for failing to provide timely court-ordered competency evaluations, citing several cases in which mentally ill inmates decompensated and suffered unconscionable treatment while in solitary confinement.“The state of Washington is violating the constitutional rights of some of its most vulnerable citizens,” Pechman said in her ruling.
“Jails are not hospitals, they are not designed as therapeutic environments, and they are not equipped to manage mental illness or keep those with mental illness from being victimized by the general population of inmates,” Pechman continued.
Pechman gave the state nine months to address the problem and appointed a monitor to oversee the process.
But some advocates have raised concerns about forcing more patients into an overwhelmed system that can’t provide proper care.
Numerous lawsuits have been filed recently against several of the state’s psychiatric hospitals, detailing extreme cases of overcrowding, or “warehousing.”
With only 18.1 hospital beds per 100,000 people, Washington fails to meet the minimum standard to provide adequate treatment for individuals with severe mental illness.
Moreover, the odds are 3.1 to 1 that a seriously mentally ill person will be incarcerated in jail or prison instead of admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Washington.
Clearly, the state has a lot of work to do and needs to rethink its revolving door system of shifting the most severely mentally ill from hospitals to jail cells.
Read our report “More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons than Hospitals: A Survey of the States“ to learn more.
To comment, visit our Facebook page.
Visit our blog archive to read all our recent posts.