(Sept. 22, 2015) A number of Kansas mental health advocacy groups have teamed up to propose new legislation that could keep hundreds of people with serious mental illness from ending up in jails, emergency rooms or a state-run hospital (“Proposal would create ‘receiving center’ treatment option for mental health patients,” KHI News, Sept. 17).
The bill would allow Kansas communities to open secure “receiving centers” where people who appear to be seriously mentally ill and in crisis may be involuntarily held for up to 72 hours, instead of the 24 hours – 48 hours on a weekend – current law allows.
“This has the potential to be one of those win-win-win situations that, frankly, in my 38-year career I can honestly say doesn’t come along very often,” said Bill Rein, commissioner of behavioral health services at the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, one of the groups behind the legislation.
“If this is done right, it would be better for the person who’s in crisis, better for law enforcement, better for the courts. Better for everyone,” Rein continued.
The soon-to-be-introduced bill will likely be similar to laws already established in Arizona and Texas.
Liza Jensen, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness office in San Antonio, says she’s seen it work in Texas.
“It promotes patients’ rights and it protects the families who care for them,” said Jensen. “But the most important thing in all this is jail diversion — getting them to a place where they can be evaluated and get treatment instead of being taken to jail.”
But advocates are not the only ones backing the proposal. Former Kansas psychiatric patients have also expressed their support (“Former Kansas state hospital patients express support for ‘receiving center’ bill,” KHI News, Sept. 17).
Dantia MacDonald, 40, was diagnosed with schizoaffective bipolar disorder in 2007, and was twice committed to a Kansas state hospital for psychiatric care in 2013.
MacDonald believes she would have benefited from being taken to a secure facility and forced to take her medication.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to go because I was too sick to be making those kinds of decisions,” MacDonald said. “But now, looking back on it, I’d much rather have gone somewhere like that for three days than having to go to [the hospital].”
With only 24.7 public psychiatric beds per 100,000 people, Kansas currently fails to meet the 50-bed standard considered necessary to provide minimally adequate treatment for individuals with severe mental illness. Adding additional facilities like the proposed receiving centers would supplement some of the missing beds and make treatment available to more people who desperately need it.
While community receiving centers in Kansas might not be a catch-all solution to the state’s inadequate mental health system in the long run, it is certainly a step in the right direction.
(Photo: eyecmore/Flickr)
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