Rights, Recovery Stressed at Mental Health Commission
Meeting
(Feb. 10, 2003) – The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
last week urged the President’s Commission on Mental Health
to emphasize rights and recovery in its consideration of public
mental health system reforms.
Senior staff attorney Michael Allen called on the commission to
promote the rights of people with mental disabilities by adopting
an earlier subcommittee report on rights that the Commission deferred
consideration of in a January meeting.
“In its interim report, the Commission correctly identified
recovery as an appropriate and realistic goal for every person diagnosed
with a psychiatric disability,” said Allen. “But that
goal will prove elusive in any mental health system that does not,
in word and in deed, recognize and respect civil and constitutional
rights.”
Allen called for full implementation of the landmark Olmstead decision
that affirmed the Americans with Disabilities Act’s community
integration mandate and encouraged the commission to support initiatives
to minimize seclusion and restraint in institutional settings.
In separate testimony, Bazelon Center policy director Chris Koyanagi
underscored the importance of community-based mental health services
to promoting recovery for people with mental illnesses, promoting
cost efficient systems of care and reducing incidents of institutional
abuse.
“Addressing issues of perceived lack of capacity for acute
institutional care is best achieved by ensuring that a strong community
system exists to prevent de-compensation and relapse and provide
appropriate, effective services of consumers’ choice,”
said Koyangi. “Nowhere in this country does such a community
system exist.”
Koyanagi cautioned the commission against overemphasizing the importance
of acute care in public mental health systems.
“We need to fund what works best, and not needlessly rely
on institutional services,” said Koyanagi.
Complete statements by Koyanagi and Allen are available online
at www.bazelon.org
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The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
is the nation’s leading legal advocate for the rights of people
with mental disabilities.
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