The Gap: Few Options for Those With Severe Mental Illness

  The Americas With Disabilities Act re-crafted the previous mental health system by ensuring rights to those with mental illness. The result for those of us caring for persons with severe mental illness is that long term involuntary treatment isn’t an option. Doctors are limited to about 15 days on a court order. The severely mentally ill, who will not voluntarily enter treatment unless they end up in the criminal justice system or probate court have no options. Even then, the system has been restructured so that there are very few if any facilities left to house and treat those <1% of people with severe illness. Long gone are the state facilities that provided this care. It has been left to families or prisons to deal with.

Facts. Harsh implications for our families, but the quality of care in the facilities before ADA was also very troubling. There needs to be some way to bridge the gap.