Homeless and Helpless

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John Kennedy and the legislation that he championed, commonly called the Community Mental Health Centers Act.

In his remarks to Congress, the president said (and no doubt believed) that “when carried out, reliance on the cold mercy of custodial isolation will be supplanted by the open warmth of community concern and capability.” He must be rolling over in his grave.

On a single night in January 2012, a total of 111,993 men and women with severe mental illness were reported to be homeless in America. Of those, 46,550 were sleeping unsheltered — on the streets, in parks and abandoned buildings, under overpasses and bridges, in tents, sheds, barns, and other places “not meant for human habitation.”

E. Fuller Torrey is the executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute and a prolific, noted author of books about homeless mentally ill people. He is also a board member of the Treatment Advocacy Center, which released a report in May 2010 that validates his militant advocacy for assisted outpatient treatment.

That report, “More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons than Hospitals: A Survey of the States,” reported that “there are now more than three times more seriously mentally ill persons in jails and prisons than in hospitals.”

The report went on to state that “America’s jails and prisons have become our new mental hospitals” and that “40 percent of individuals with serious mental illnesses have been in jail or prison at some time in their lives.” At its heart is the reality, expressed by Torrey in October 2013, that “It is almost impossible to get someone committed.”

Nobody gets the bottom line of the issue better than the National Association of Mental Health Directors, who reported in 2012 that “We are spending money in all the wrong places — prisons, emergency departments, and homeless shelters — when the illnesses become more serious.”

Nobody gets the need for changes in the system better than families who are heartsick at what is happening to their loved ones — or worse, what may happen to them or others if he or she becomes one of the small minority of those who are too dangerous to themselves or others to remain in the community without effective mental-health treatment.

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