Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law Statement on
the President's New Freedom
Commission on Mental Health's Interim Report
(Washington, DC) -- The Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health
Law, the nation's leading legal advocate for the rights of people with
mental disabilities, today released the following statement on the President's
New Freedom Commission on Mental Health's interim report. Executive Director
Robert Bernstein, Ph.D., today commented on the report:
The interim report of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental
Health sounds a clear warning that the public mental health system is
in trouble and that it is past time the country got serious about solutions.
Yet acknowledging a problem is only the first step. The commission must
now turn its attention to the difficult work of drafting policy recommendations
that will improve the effectiveness of public systems charged with helping
people with mental illnesses.
Merely managing symptoms is an insufficient response to mental illness.
People with mental illnesses can recover. To do so they must have voluntary
access not only to quality mental health services, but also to supports
in the community that can empower them to succeed, such as housing, job
training and education.
It is a national travesty that 90 percent of adults with serious mental
illnesses are unemployed even though many want to work and are capable
of doing so with assistance.
We need to fund programs that actively engage people with mental illnesses
where they are - in the workplace, in schools or on the streets. Treatment
cannot be limited to medication management and coercion is an unacceptable
substitute for the active engagement of mental health consumers in their
treatment decisions.
It is high time we expect more from these systems than sporadic damage
control and crisis response. We have set the bar for public mental health
systems too low for too long.
People with mental illnesses can and should have the same rights and
responsibilities as other Americans. But for this to occur we must reject
the soft bigotry of low expectations and start expecting more from public
mental health systems.
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The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is the nation’s leading
legal advocate for people with mental disabilities. Since its founding
in 1972, the nonprofit organization’s precedent-setting litigation
and public-policy advocacy has successfully challenged many barriers and
expanded access to public schools, workplaces, housing and many other
opportunities for community life. For more information, please visit the
Bazelon Center online at www.bazelon.org.
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