A Slow-Motion Train Wreck – States know how to care for the mentally ill. Why aren’t they?

Breakdown

We know how best to care for the mentally ill. But most states lack the political will to coordinate and fund services.

When a public system issues a cry for help, it often does so in horrific ways. Sure, there are stacks of polite studies and the occasional sharply worded report, pleas from advocates and the dogged efforts of a few legislators. But more visible than any of these is abject failure.

There’s Esmin Green, for instance, caught on video this past June keeling over and dying on the floor of a psychiatric emergency-room waiting area in a Brooklyn hospital after sitting for more than 24 hours hoping for care. There’s Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, released from a psychiatric hospital for court-ordered outpatient treatment he never sought and no one knew to enforce. There’s Sarah Crider, a 14-year-old girl who died in a pool of her own bloody vomit in a Georgia state mental hospital, one of 115 psychiatric patients in the state’s care who died under questionable circumstances between 2002 and 2007.

By ROB GURWITT

Full Story: http://governing.com/articles/0810mental.htm