(March 30, 2017) Once again, Maryland is in the news for failing to catch someone with mental illness from falling through the cracks, and to disastrous outcomes.
Taleah Everett, a young woman with mental illness and a history of psychotic behavior, has been arrested following her erratic driving on Capitol Hill yesterday in Washington, DC, charged among other things for assaulting a police officer, and will be filtered through the criminal justice system. A federal judge has ordered her held without bond. (Shots Fired After Woman Nearly Strikes Officer Near US Capitol, NBC News Washington)
We get a sense of déjà vu as we read the story. Taleah’s family tried to get her help, petitioning Prince George’s County, Maryland, less than two weeks ago to evaluate her for treatment, and the judge denied the request for an emergency evaluation. Perhaps she did not, in the judge’s opinion, meet the strict dangerousness criteria necessary to hold her involuntarily in Maryland. It is hard to believe this is what the state’s system puts families through, who are trying desperately to get care for their loved ones.
Maryland is one of only four states that have failed to adopt assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) — a civil, non-criminal court ordered safety net for mental health treatment in the community — as an option to intervene and get treatment to people who are very sick before they require inpatient hospitalization or arrest.
AOT is available across the country, and has been sanctioned by the federal government as an intervention to both improve mental health outcomes and reduce incarceration of people with severe mental illness. If Maryland had AOT and Taleah met criteria, a civil court order could require the mental-health system to provide her with treatment, supportive services and regular check-ins.
Here is the irony: just earlier this year, Prince George’s County, Maryland, State Representative Erek Barron tried to introduce legislation to permit AOT in Maryland — a measure recommended by the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in 2014 — but the bill was stymied by lobbyists, and he pulled it last month. So in the meantime, Maryland remains one of a few states without AOT, and this intervention remains unavailable as avenue to help prevent people with serious mental illness from ending up in jail, in hospitals, or worse.
Taleah’s story is one more in a long history of ignoring the problem until it becomes a tragedy; unbelievably, nothing in the system has changed since the tragic death of 3-year-old Ji’Aire Lee, who was found on a Maryland playground after his mother, Romechia Simms, pushed him on a swing for nearly two days in 2015.
The time is well overdue for Maryland to take meaningful action and provide AOT.
(Photo credit: Courtesy of Taleah Everett's family)