Psych Observer – Exposing Bad Psychiatry

Asbury Park Press editorial

URL: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080508/OPINION01/805080594/1029/OPINION

It’s good to see the Legislature putting pressure on the Department of Human Services to expedite the release of psychiatric patients and developmentally disabled residents who don’t require institutionalization from state psychiatric hospitals. Now let’s see some action.

At an Assembly budget committee hearing Tuesday, lawmakers criticized the department’s failure to adequately address the long waiting list for group homes or supervised apartments, the poor care being provided at state psychiatric hospitals — problems outlined in the ongoing Press series “Trouble at Ancora” — and the excessive overtime allocation requested by Human Services.

The institutionalized patients, particularly those cleared for release from these horror chambers but who have no place to go, have been given short shrift for far too long. The state needs to act in the short term for the welfare of those patients and in the long term for the benefit of taxpayers by reducing the population, and the required staff and facility space, at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital and other institutions.

Instead, patients with developmental disabilities or mental illnesses who are eligible to live in residential care facilities and possibly become productive members of their communities are stuck in terrible and terrifying conditions. Or they’re under the care of aging parents who worry who will care for their children when they are no longer able.

An anticipated 2.8 million hours of overtime listed in the upcoming budget for the state’s 12 psychiatric hospitals and development centers — adding up to 319 years worth of round-the-clock overtime hours — is particularly troubling. Is every staff member working double shifts seven days a week? Those figures not only sound high, they seem implausible.

Gov. Corzine should direct Human Services Commissioner Jennifer Velez to sit down with an auditor and Public Advocate Ronald Chen to find a way to allocate the department’s funding more efficiently. With a $9.7 billion proposed budget, only about $12.5 million is set aside to help move 300 people off the “priority” waiting list of 4,900 people into group homes. That’s not nearly enough.

Earlier this year, Chen said moving 300 psychiatric patients into the underused residential care facilities in the state would save the state $20 million annually. The state needs to act, both to save tax dollars and to provide a more humane and respectful environment for one of society’s most vulnerable populations.