Thank you for publishing Martha Bellisle’s Associated Press article, “Hospital or jail? A broken system for mentally ill.”
It is easy to think that we have come far from the “dark ages” of mental health care, when large asylums warehoused people with mental illness, often in appalling conditions. Though many individuals have left those grim institutions, our failure to fund the community care necessary to treat them has turned our jails and hospitals into the new de facto asylums.
The people who are being subject to this often inhumane and unjust incarceration are vulnerable, hurting and deserving of quality care. While it is a positive step that psychiatric boarding in emergency rooms has been deemed unlawful — we must now back up this moral and legal stand with concrete action. It is not enough to demand that people with mental illness be removed from institutions that are unfit to treat them, we must also make available more supportive treatment options (like mobile crisis and assertive community treatment teams) for these individuals to turn to.
The mental health crisis we face requires us to invest in the long-term solutions necessary to truly support people struggling with mental illness — and to help prevent them from falling into crisis in the first place. Now is the time for the Legislature to finally dedicate adequate funds to community mental health programs that can help individuals with mental illness to stay safe, live meaningful lives, and get on the road to recovery.
Alan Wong
Seattle
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