Mental
Health Association in New York State, Inc. |
Friday Fax from Albany
Take
Action on Timothy’s Law Now! Now
that MHANYS’ has reviewed the Senate’s recently introduced
mental health parity legislation (S.7296), it’s time to take some
action. To recap, the new Senate bill (S.7296) differs from Timothy’s
Law (S.5329) in that it:
Timothy’s Law supporters must join Tom O’Clair in telling the Senate that their new bill (S.7296) is, “a far cry from Timothy's Law," (Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin, 5/15 – see below) and I urge them to pass S.5329 - Timothy's Law. Please use MHANYS’ Online Advocacy website, http://www.mhanys.org/policy/advtlc.php, to send your NYS Senator an e-mail, asking them not to abandon Timothy’s Law (S.5329). Click on the Board of Elections link if you are unsure who your Senator is – simply plug in your address.
Early Registration Discount for OMH’s Transcending Trauma Ends May 28th: Early registration for OMH’s Transcending Trauma: Evidence-Based & Promising Practices Symposium (July 12-13 in Brooklyn, NY) ends on May 28th. The symposium will provide clinicians and self-help leaders with the skills needed to integrate the assessment and treatment of PTSD and trauma-based disorders into mental health services. Transcending Trauma will bring together public sector mental health service recipients and providers with interest and/or experience in both disaster trauma, like 9/11, and diffuse trauma, like childhood physical and sexual abuse and neglect. To be held at the Brooklyn Marriott. For more information visit http://www.omh.state.ny.us/omhweb/trauma/
In the News: Proposal
could end gridlock on mental-health coverage. By Erika Rosenberg ALBANY -- People with major mental illnesses would be guaranteed insurance coverage under a scaled-back proposal made by Senate Republicans this week. The measure does not go as far as a bill backed by Assembly Democrats and mental-health advocates, but those groups said it was a starting point toward the goal of better coverage and treatment for people with mental illness. "It's a first step. This is the first time the Senate has made a commitment at the leadership level to do mental-health parity," said Harvey Rosenthal, who lobbies for mental-health providers as director of the state Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services. For years, activists have been pushing for a "parity" bill that would put mental-health coverage on a par with insurance coverage for physical ailments. The Assembly has already approved a bill named for Timothy O'Clair, a 12-year-old Schenectady boy who hung himself after a struggle with depression. When his family ran out of insurance coverage for his care, they turned custody of him over to Schenectady County, a step other families have had to take to get mental-health treatment. The Senate plans to pass its more limited version of the parity bill next week. Advocates hope the two houses can hammer out a compromise through a joint group called a conference committee. "Obviously, we're looking to the negotiations to produce a Timothy's Law that we can all be proud of," Rosenthal said. The Senate proposal would require coverage for major disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder and eating problems, including bulimia and anorexia. But it would exempt small businesses with 50 or fewer employees from having to offer the coverage. And it would allow any business that sees at least a 2 percent increase in health premiums to apply for a waiver. "It is a much more defined and much more effective" measure than the Assembly bill, said Sen. Thomas W. Libous, R-Binghamton, chairman of the Senate's mental health committee. The Assembly bill requires health plans to offer coverage of mental illness equal to that for physical illness, without limiting it to specific mental disorders. Advocates say it would help 4 million people while increasing health premiums by less than 1 percent. But business and health insurance lobbyists say the costs would be much higher, kicking premiums up 3.5 percent. The Senate bill is more limited in scale, one said. "While this proposal appears more reasonable than the much broader Assembly version, it's a mandate and we oppose it," said Mark Amodeo, spokesman for the New York Conference of Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans. Insurance companies in New York have been hit with a number of coverage mandates in recent years, including requirements to cover chiropractic care and birth control. Tom O'Clair isn't ready to have his son's name put on the Senate bill. "It's a far cry from Timothy's Law," said O'Clair, who has been lobbying for the more expansive measure. "They want to cut things out." Still, he said he was glad to see the Senate Republicans take action on the issue. "I'm glad that they're not just sitting on it anymore," he said.
Mental
health plans viewed. By James T. Mulder Hearing Friday at Hutchings in Syracuse explores ideas to revamp state system. Instead of closing its psychiatric centers, the state should turn them into centers of excellence specializing in behavioral health research and planning. That was one of several recommendations offered to the state Office of Mental Health at a public hearing Friday at Hutchings Psychiatric Center in Syracuse. Eight people spoke at the hearing, which was conducted to gather input on a five-year statewide plan for mental health services. They urged the state to create more services for people suffering from eating disorders, support peer-run self-help groups for the mentally ill and provide data to patients on the success rates of different psychiatric treatments. Fred Fusco, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Onondaga County, said the state needs to make "a bold and daring departure from what now exists." He said the Office of Mental Health should use Gov. George Pataki's effort to create high technology centers of excellence around the state as a model for its state-operated psychiatric centers. Such a move would "take the public mental health system out of the tired and depressing cycle it has been." The state's 144-page mental health services plan outlines areas in which the Office of Mental Health hopes to make improvements and changes over the next five years. Reducing the number of state psychiatric hospitals and creating more community-based outpatient services are top priorities in the plan. As part of the plan, the state has proposed the creation of a bipartisan commission that would recommend which of the state's 26 psychiatric centers should be closed. The state contends many of the hospitals are underused, too costly to operate and not the best places for many patients to get care. The state proposed closing Hutchings in 2001 and again in 2003, but shelved the idea after the plan sparked intense opposition from families, Hutchings workers and elected officials. Last month, the state shut down Four Winds, a private 107-bed mental hospital in Syracuse, after inspectors found serious deficiencies at the facility. That closing wiped out 64 beds for children and teenagers at Four Winds, leaving the community with only 16 psychiatric beds for youngsters at Hutchings. At Friday's hearing, Joseph Glazer, president of the state Mental Health Association, said the on-again, off-again proposals to close Hutchings, followed by the shutdown of Four Winds, suggest the state needs to do a better job of planning. Mary Ellen Clausen, of Liverpool, said both of her daughters have gone out of state for treatment of eating disorders because there are no services here. Because of inadequate insurance coverage, the cost of treatment has taken a heavy toll on her family. Since 1997, those costs have exceeded $500,000, she said. Roberta J. Hagerty, of Watertown, said she helped start a peer-run drop-in center for the mentally ill in 1992 which now serves more than 500 members. She said such peer-run programs have helped her son, who has schizophrenia. "The assumption that an individual enduring chronic mental illness is incapable of making good decisions about his or her recovery, unless directed and overseen by a clinician, is archaic," she said.
Mental
illness crunch stresses everyone. By Jennifer Jacobs Lack of mental health beds means many area kids must be treated in distant cities. When A.J. Snyder had an emotional breakdown at age 13, she needed care in a mental health hospital. She'd been taken away from an abusive mother when she was 8, then shifted to six foster families in four years. Three weeks after she was adopted by Mattydale resident Dede Snyder, A.J was acting defiant and aggressive. She refused to go to school, follow rules or trust in anyone's ability to be fair to her. She fell apart, Dede Snyder said, recalling the episode in January 2002. At the psychiatric emergency room in Syracuse, the stressed-out mom couldn't believe it when the staff said all of Syracuse's mental health beds for children were full. The closest bed was 47 miles away in Utica. "It was almost devastating," said Snyder, who traveled back and forth from Utica every day after work for three months. "Having a child in the hospital is extremely stressful, and driving that far was so disruptive. I was constantly tired all the time. I'm still trying to clean up some things that never got done then." Central New York families say finding a hospital bed in Syracuse for a child battling mental illness has been difficult for years, but the space crunch is worse now. Last month, the state forced Four Winds, a private mental hospital in Syracuse with 64 beds for children and teens, to shut its doors after inspectors found serious deficiencies. The closure left the community with 16 psychiatric beds for youths at Hutchings Psychiatric Center, a state hospital. Kids from other counties in Central New York also compete for those hospital beds, because there are none to be had in Cortland, Cayuga, Oswego and Madison counties, according to state documents. Since Four Winds started closing March 26, staff at the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Room (CPEP) in Syracuse determined that 16 children seeking treatment were unstable and had to be hospitalized, said Kristin Riley, Onondaga County deputy commissioner of mental health. Only four got beds in the Syracuse area. The rest were hospitalized outside the county - two in Buffalo, eight in Utica, one in Saratoga, and one in Ogdensburg. In a couple of those cases, it was the family's personal choice or an insurance requirement that forced them to travel that far for care, Riley said. The majority would have preferred a Syracuse bed. Riley said, "To me, the question is, should mental health services be available for kids in a city the size of Syracuse? Yes. Are there enough services to cover all the needs right now? No. Do you want to call that a shortage? Yes, that probably is." The state's solution is to steer Syracuse-area youths to the 35 beds at Mohawk Valley Psychiatric Center in Utica. As of last week, all the beds there for children were full, said Roger Klingman, a spokesman for the state Office of Mental Health. Central New York families say Utica is not an acceptable substitute for local care. "(The drive) is harder than it sounds," Dede Snyder said. The distance made it difficult for friends and relatives to visit A.J. just when she needed the support most, she said. The hardship was worse for families caring for other children, and those who didn't have a car or money for a bus ticket, Snyder added. The distance also hampers the Utica staff's ability to meet with a child's school officials or to hook up the family with local services that can help once the child is discharged. After three months, a bed opened up at Hutchings and A.J. was transferred to Syracuse. System already overloaded The shortage of psychiatric beds is a symptom of a larger shortage in children's mental health care: long waiting lists for psychiatrists, community programs, and beds at longer-term residential treatment facilities. It's Nancy Kuss's job at Onondaga Case Management Services to connect parents of emotionally-disturbed children with community services. "It's very hard when I have families who are in crisis and there really isn't anything you can do except give them a pep talk and tell them to hang in there a little longer," said Kuss, whose son, Christopher, now 25, had behavioral and emotional problems as a child. The shortage of youth mental health beds in the area led a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, KidsPeace Inc., to open a 220-bed residential treatment facility in Romulus in 2000. A residential facility is often the next step for youths released from short-term psychiatric hospitals such as Hutchings or Four Winds. Four Winds's closure alarms John Treahy, the executive director of KidsPeace Seneca Wood, a $30 million campus located at the defunct Seneca Army Depot. "I happened to be in Syracuse and saw that headline about Four Winds in a newspaper box and stopped dead in my tracks," Treahy said. "This is going to put a tremendous amount of stress on a system that's already overloaded." KidsPeace took two patients from Four Winds just before it closed. That wasn't a problem; KidsPeace still has a few open beds. "What I'm really concerned about is that the kids we've gotten in the past through Four Winds came to us stabilized," Treahy said. "Without that stabilization in a hospital, we may be faced with taking in kids who are much less stable and are not going to be as successful in treatment." Some families said Four Winds wasn't great, but it was better than nothing. Zina Colvin, of the village of Madison, said her 16-year-old daughter, Diamond McAllister, had a bad experience at Four Winds when she was hospitalized in October 2003 after chasing her older brother with a butcher knife. When Colvin visited Four Winds, Diamond was dirty. Food was splashed on the walls. When Diamond called home in the middle of the night a couple times, her mother worried she wasn't being supervised. Diamond started cutting herself during her six months there. After being restrained once, she ended up with a bruise on her face, Colvin said. Diamond is now at KidsPeace. A.J. Snyder also spent time at Four Winds in spring 2001, and was beaten up by another girl. A.J. still has arm soreness from staff jabbing her with needles to give her chemical restraints, Dede Snyder said. There were frequent melees among the patients, the mother said, and the rooms were "trashed." "It was chaos there," Snyder said. "Her doctor said Four Winds has hurt her, that she saw and experienced things there that set her recovery back." A.J., now 16, is at Hillside Children's Center, a residential treatment facility in Sennett in Cayuga County, and is doing well, her mother said. She's earning an 87 average in her sophomore-level education classes and is hoping to come home in June. "I have seen her literally blossom and not only begin to understand herself, but accept herself," said Snyder, who called the staff at Hillside, Hutchings and Mohawk Valley "heroes." Several families agreed that once a child gets admitted, treatment at the public facilities is very good. Hutchings a big help Liverpool resident Cathy Munson said each time she took her son, Jordan, to CPEP, the psychiatric emergency room, in the late 1990s, there were no local beds available. Each time, Munson went home feeling crushing uncertainty over how to care for her son, who is usually gentle, but has a disorder that causes him to become aggressive when he's frustrated or stressed out. After at least 15 trips to CPEP, Jordan got a bed at Hutchings at age 11 in 1998 after he had a meltdown at school, angrily overturning a desk and frightening a teacher, Cathy said. Munson said leaving Jordan at the hospital was heartwrenching. A police officer drove Jordan from CPEP to Hutchings. A nurse let Munson hug her son good-bye, then led him away. "I'm crying, and he's crying," she said. "He was scared to death, and I was too, because I didn't know if what I was doing was the right thing." Hutchings, it turned out, had Jordan's well-being in mind, Munson said. They gave him his own room, with walls decorated with blue paint and artwork. A strict routine made him feel safe. He learned how to control his behavior, and earned rewards through a point system. It wasn't always easy. At breakfast Christmas Eve morning, Jordan's anger got the better of him. He swished his arm across the table, knocking his tray of food to the floor. This cost him all his reward points, canceling a visit home for Christmas. But a nurse invented chores to let him earn points back. "She had him straightening bookshelves and picking lint off the floor, bless her heart," Munson recalled, laughing. Jordan, now 16, lives at home and rides a bus to a special school in Utica. "He has progressed 100 percent," his mother said. "Jordan is on the road to independence.
Service
Groups Told Not to Expect Funding. By Karen DeWitt The late budget is once again affecting not-for-profit groups that rely on state money to carry out human services. This year, though, the groups say they aren't simply waiting for their funding- they are being told that they might not get the money at all. Nearly every year Governor Pataki proposes cuts to a range of not for profit groups that rely on state monies for part of their funding. And every year, depending on the state's fiscal circumstances, the legislature restores all or part of the money. But this year, the groups, that perform services like mental health rehabilitation, and programs for AIDS patients, say they are being told that they might not receive any money at all. The difference is the increased financial pressure caused by a court order to the governor and legislature to reform the state's school aid system. Harvey Rosenthal lobbies for mental health services groups. He says lawmakers are telling him that satisfying the court order could be so costly that it could drain all of extra money available for restorations. "People are so unclear about whether education is this giant vacuum cleaner that will suck every dollar we have ," he said. The estimates of the costs of answering the court order range from Governor Pataki's prediction of $2 billion more dollars a year, to as high as $10 billion additional dollars. Mike Kink, with Housing Works, represents a number of groups that provide services to people with AIDS and HIV. "There's no question this year that the need for large amounts of new education spending is sucking some of the oxygen out of the budget debate," he said. "Billions of dollars are at stake, and a lot of that could come from front line services for people with AIDS and other people with serious needs around the state." Currently, the groups are still getting their funding at last year's rate. The governor and legislature have been passing budget extensions to keep spending at the same level as the previous fiscal year. But they say if the programs are going to be cut, the smaller agencies need to start planning now for lay offs or service cuts. The governor and legislative leaders have become nearly paralyzed under the weight of the task the court has ordered them to carry out. They must decide on educational standards, set up a new streamlined school aid formula, and find a way to pay for what most believe will be significant extra costs to comply with the court order. So far, no one has come up with a plan to pay for the additional expenses that everyone can agree on. Governor Pataki wants the state to build more gambling parlors. In a year when all 212 seats of the legislature are up for election, no lawmaker is publicly talking about taxes to pay for any extra school aid. Rosenthal and Kink say groups like the ones they represent and other not-for- profits who are dependent on state money feel like they are frozen in time, until the logjam breaks on the budget.
Senate
Majority Offers New Mental Health Parity Bill. By Howard Koplowitz The Senate majority unveiled its own mental health parity legislation last week as an alternative to Timothy’s Law, which has passed the Assembly for the past two years. The legislation covers biologically based mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bulimia, anorexia and binge eating. Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, R,C-Brunswick, said the list of mental illnesses covered under the Assembly mental health parity legislation is too broad and would escalate costs that businesses and individuals could not afford. The Senate version also includes a business exemption, which would allow businesses with 50 employees or less to opt out of coverage if they can prove to the superintendent of the State Insurance Department that insurance premium costs would increase 2 percent or more by providing mental health coverage. Harvey Rosenthal, executive director of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, was on hand to show appreciation to Senate leaders for their willingness to adopt mental health parity legislation, although he prefers that the bill that comes out of negotiations with the Assembly to represent as much of Timothy’s Law as possible. “Timothy’s Law is the ideal blueprint,” Rosenthal said. Still, he called the Senate’s effort a historic commitment. State Sen. Thomas W. Libous, R,C-Binghamton, is the Senate sponsor for Timothy’s Law, but endorsed and helped draft the Senate Majority’s proposal. Gordon Mann, spokesman for Libous, said the senator put the original bill on the table to start discussion on the issue. Mann acknowledged that insurance costs would be the most elusive part of the negotiation process. Rosenthal agrees with Mann on the cost issue, and is concerned that the business exemption would disallow 1 million to 1.25 million New Yorkers from receiving mental health parity. J. David Seay, executive director for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in New York, said the bill that Libous introduced is “steps back” from Timothy’s Law. Seay said he thinks Libous is endorsing the Senate majority’s mental health parity legislation after hearing from interests groups who say that insurance costs will be too high under Timothy’s Law, and that Libous would agree with him that the new bill is a setback. Included in the bill is a study provision that would require the state Insurance Department and the Office of Mental Health to conduct a two-year study evaluating the effectiveness and impact of the legislation. Additionally, the bill has a sunset provision of Dec. 31, 2007, if the legislation passes during this session. Timothy’s Law is inspired by Timothy O’Clair, a 12-year-old who suffered from depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and oppositional defiance disorder. He hung himself in his bedroom closet seven weeks before his 13th birthday.
Disabled
Protesters Block Doors at End of Hearing on Elections.
By Al Baker ALBANY, May 18 - Disabled protesters used their wheelchairs to block the doors after a panel of lawmakers working to overhaul New York's aging election system ended a meeting on Tuesday without discussing ways to make polling places more accessible to the disabled. As the lawmakers gathered their papers to leave about 2 p.m., dozens of protesters moved swiftly to trap them inside a small conference room on the seventh floor of the Legislative Office Building, shouting: "Voting is a civil right! Give us access now!'' About half an hour later, state troopers arrived at the scene and cleared the exits so that people, including a pregnant woman, could leave. Two of the disabled protesters were charged with disorderly conduct, a violation, Sgt. Mark W. Bellinger said. "They blocked access to the office doors here,'' said the sergeant, who added that no one was hurt. "If there's a fire alarm, it would hinder the safe evacuation of the building. Seated in their wheelchairs in a hallway after the room had been cleared, those charged identified themselves as Susan Stahl and Barbara Knowlen, both of Rochester. They and other protesters said they had been disappointed that the legislators, on a bipartisan joint committee studying ways to fulfill the requirements of the Help America Vote Act, had yet to publicly discuss access to voting machines for the disabled. They want at least one voting machine in each polling place to have an audio prompt for the blind and an attachment allowing quadriplegics to cast votes with their breath, using a sip-and-puff system. Mike Godino of the Queens Independent Living Center Inc., who helped organize the protest, said the Assembly had ideas on the matter that might work. "They're not providing us the ability to access the machines,'' Mr. Godino said. "We wanted to get them to come to the table and start to discuss it. They've been ignoring it and they said that today was supposed to be the last meeting." Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director of the League of Women Voters, said the frustration level among the protesters had been rising for quite a while. Locked in the room with others, she said that Tuesday's protest probably went on a bit too long. "But they did get their point across,'' she said.
Until
next time, we remain, |