LAWS OF TAKE OVER
From MSN news:
Law raises issues of states’ reach in patient care
Debate swirls over rules allowing mentally ill to be forced into treatment
By Chris L. Jenkins
Updated: 2:58 a.m. ET,Sun., Dec. 30, 2007
NEW YORK - Susan Wezel had been committed to the city's hospital wards more than a dozen times in 10 years. Her psychosis was so deep and debilitating that she lost her career and her relationship with her son, as she refused to take her medication or follow treatment.
But because of a New York state law, Wezel hasn't been hospitalized in more than a year. She doesn't wander the streets alone at night anymore. She takes her medication willingly. She even has plans to follow her dream of singing at a neighborhood nightspot--something that was unthinkable 18 months ago.
Wezel and her caseworker agree that the transformation occurred because of the law, which allowed officials to force Wezel into an outpatient treatment program after she was discharged from a hospital.
Known as Kendra's Law, it is considered one of the most far-reaching mental health statutes in the country. It gives great latitude to doctors, social workers and relatives to take mentally ill people before a judge to force them into treatment, and it provides money for clinical services.
Just how far states can go to get mentally ill people into treatment is a key issue in Virginia. The state is struggling with changing its mental health system after a mentally ill gunman shot and killed 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech in April before killing himself.
"All of this has saved my life," Wezel, 50, said in an interview at her caseworker's office in Queens. As part of the treatment order, she was given immediate access to a caseworker who closely monitors her through visits and phone calls. If Wezel fails to comply with her treatment, she can be picked up by police and taken to a hospital.
Wezel's experience with forced treatment underscores one of the most controversial issues in the care of the mentally ill. Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, had been ordered into outpatient treatment, but officials didn't monitor whether he received it, and he never did.
Had something as detailed as Kendra's Law been in place, with its high expectation of accountability, officials might have been forced to monitor whether Cho got treatment, supporters of such measures say.
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Rarely used outpatient law Virginia has an outpatient treatment law, but it is rarely used. Judges interviewed since the Virginia Tech rampage have said that they prefer institutionalization for the most severely endangered patients. Some judges said they think that ordering outpatient treatment is a waste of time because the lack of resources would make follow-up nearly impossible.
A survey conducted this year by the Virginia Supreme Court's Commission on Mental Health Reform found that judges used the outpatient treatment option in 5.4 percent of cases during the month studied.
Kendra's Law, named after Kendra Webdale, a 32-year-old woman who was killed in 1999 when she was pushed in front of a New York City subway train by a severely mentally ill man, allows courts to use a much lower standard than Virginia's to force outpatient mental health treatment.
To qualify for forced treatment under Kendra's Law, among other criteria, a person must have been hospitalized twice within the previous three years; must have shown violent behavior toward himself or others in the previous four years; and must need treatment to "prevent a relapse or deterioration which would be likely to result in serious harm to the person or others."
Across the country, supporters of such programs, known as preventive outpatient commitment laws, have called them pragmatic approaches in addressing the needs of the millions of mentally ill people who are not in institutions.
But there is intense debate among experts and policymakers about whether coercive statutes would be necessary in cases in which states increase the availability of services to the mentally ill.
Maryland does not have an outpatient commitment law. The District has a standard like Kendra's Law, but it is used sparingly.
The Supreme Court commission in Virginia recommended this month that the state expand the use of outpatient treatment for those who don't meet the criteria for forced hospitalization. The panel also called for specific procedures to monitor those receiving outpatient treatment and suggested ways to enforce it. But lawmakers also expect debate over a more expansive law that mirrors the New York statute when the General Assembly convenes next month.
These arguments over outpatient commitment are some of the most emotional and contentious debates you'll find in mental health law," said Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University who is involved in a three-year study of Kendra's Law for the state of New York. "It really goes to the heart of whether we believe community mental health care can be effective without coercion and at what point we're willing to say that coercion might be necessary, legitimate and humane."
The New York statute outlines the responsibilities of local mental health agencies, spells out monitoring requirements and incorporates provisions for ordering noncompliant mentally ill people into hospitals. Those who are taken into outpatient treatment under Kendra's Law get immediate access to
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services. The petition process can be started by a roommate, parent, spouse, adult child or sibling, a hospital director or a caseworker, among others.
"There was nothing I could do to get her into any help before this," said Chris Wezel, 50, Susan Wezel's husband.
New York officials say the law has been effective. They conducted a survey in 2005, when the measure was up for reauthorization. The study found that a sample of patients treated under Kendra's law were more likely to participate in care, take their medication and follow up with caseworkers than when they were not treated under the law.
In addition, for those treated under the law, homelessness, arrests, hospitalizations and incarcerations dropped at least 74 percent and as much as 87 percent, the statewide survey found. Other studies conducted by mental heath researchers over the years have found similar outcomes the longer that mentally ill people stay in such coerced treatment programs.
'Coercion does work'
"Coercion does work, if it's done the right way," said Mary T. Zdanowicz, former executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington County. She said that Virginia needs a law "that incorporates involuntary treatment, both inpatient and outpatient." Such laws get patients complete help the first time, rather than partial help over and over, she said.
But opponents of Kendra's Law say that the New York study did not use a control group for comparisons. The state's legislators were so skeptical of the available research that they called for a separate study and declined to make the law permanent. That study is due in 2009, and the law will come up for reauthorization a year later.
Advocacy groups and other mental health experts who oppose Kendra's Law say that it came with money for services, proving that coercion alone is not a solution.
The statute was accompanied by $32 million a year in state funding, much of it for medication and more caseworkers.
The law also affects a small population. Last year, about 1,800 New York residents fell under its guidelines at any given time, out of more than 400,000 mentally ill adults in the state, New York state health officials said.
"You have to consider the increase in services. It's not a slam-dunk to say that just because of the law itself, we have these better results," said Peter Beitchman, a longtime advocate for the mentally ill in New York City.
As opponents of the law have said, Andrew Goldstein, the schizophrenic man who pushed Webdale, had been denied outpatient services before the incident. He was told that there was no room for him at local treatment centers.
The issue of forced outpatient treatment resonates in Virginia because of the Virginia Tech shootings. Cho had been given an outpatient treatment order 16 months before the rampage. But it was never enforced by the local community services board or Virginia Tech's counseling center, and it was never specified which one was required to do so.
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"Sometimes, those that need mental health treatment don't know they need
help," said state Sen. Henry L. Marsh III (D-Richmond), who has unsuccessfully submitted bills like Kendra's Law in previous years and will do so again next month. Marsh will be chairman of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee next year, which will consider the legislation.
Staff writer Tom Jackman contributed to this report.
© 2007 The Washington Post Company
MY COMMENTARY: Do you notice that one isolated event is used over and over to pass laws that are crippling and dehumanizing to the average decent American citizen? Example: One guy in London is caught with explosives in his shampoo at the Heathrow Airport, and within a very short time, signs (already made up of course) appear in U.S. Airports, that cause everyone, immediately without warning, to have to throw away their water bottles, their perfumes, their lotions, their shampoos, etc, into the trash before going through the gate.
Above we read that one woman is pushed to her death by a mentally ill man, and the whole of America will be put to the test.
One government-sponsored bombing in New York, and the whole Afghanistan population is subjected to American troop take-over. One bombing of a few apartment buildings in Moscow, by supposed Chechen terrorists in 1999, gave the Russian Government the excuse to go into Chechnya and destroy the country. And soon, one isolated incident in the U.S. will produce martial law.
So far, in the last year or so, laws have been passed, some without Congress approval, that give the government the right to take anything of yours—anything—including your life--under the 1100 series of Executive Orders.
One of the aspects of the Genocide Laws passed under Ronald Reagan is that witnessing that “Jesus”, “Yeshua”, or Yahushua as the only way to salvation is infringing on other’s rights, and therefore against the law. You can be arrested now for insulting homosexuals by preaching against it—in church, or on the street. You can be arrested for trying to prevent abortions, by simply praying near an abortion clinic.
Like in Canada and England, the Bible is considered a “hate book”, and people who teach it are considered hate mongers—if it speaks against anything that Luciferians like. Absolutes are being outlawed.
As of September 2007, the hate crime bill passed the Senate and will soon be made law, prohibiting free speech of the truth. It will be illegal to say anything that the government doesn’t like.
Bush’s Terrorist Bill passed in October 2006. Under this law you can be arrested for potentially “harming the government”--without council, without trial, based on circumstantial evidence and/or trumped up charges—tired by a military court.
The National Continuity Policy (May 2007) for the “continuation” of the government is basically the plan for government take-over. “Home grown terrorist” laws are being passed, so that they can accuse anyone who says
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anything against the government, or their activities, and have them arrested.
The term “terrorist” is already being attached to any public figure that speaks against the government or the President, or exposes Truth.
Folks, lets get real--we do have a dictatorship in our back yard—in our front yard too. This dictatorship is not limited to the U.S.--Israel cannot make any major decisions without the “permission” of the President. America controls Israel! We are forcing Israel to divide Jerusalem, and divide up His Land. This is invoking Yahuweh into the scene, and He’s angry to the max.
Truth is being silenced quickly. Now, “tattle tail” squadsare legal that can do anything necessary to find out about you, go into your home and look around and take notes to report on you, tap your phones, sit outside your house with listening devices, tap your e-mails, your cell phone calls, your internet choices, even check your garbage.
And, and now this bill, long in the works, actually not so much to do with the mentally ill as much as it does about its goals of separating children from parents and the believers from the non-believers, and the lovers of Elohim and His Word from those who hate it. The calling of believers mentally ill—those that hear from Elohim, children who believe in “God”, anyone who believes in God, loves His Word and practices His Word—was used in Russia under Stalin, and in Germany under Hitler to put His people into mental hospitals. In such government mental hospitals, many sane people are subjected to all sorts of heinous experiments by sadistic doctors who treat their patients like lab-rats. These “mental health facilities” will be used to separate families, and take the set-apart ones to their torture and death.
QUESTION: WHO DETERMINES WHO IS MENTALLY ILL OR NOT? -- The bought-off psychiatrists, of course. The foundational beginning of Pediatrics was psychiatry--that’s how they got started. Now it is psychiatry plus drugs for kids from birth onward—harmful vaccines—and other poisons. If a parent submits to them, they have the right to do anything they want with your child.
There is a bill before Congress, inspired by Bush, that every child in America, before entering kindergarten, must be tested for mental illness.
Here is the a statement out of Dark Majesty by Texe Maars, page 269: “As Professor Chester Pierce of Harvard University Depart of Educational Psychiatry suggested to a national teacher’s convention: `Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill, because he comes to school with certain allegiances towards his founding fathers, towards his elected officials, towards his parents, towards a belief in a supernatural being, towards the
sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity it is up to you teachers to make all these children well, by creating international children of the future.’ “.
Maars says on page 270: “It is we, who believe strongly in nation and patriotism, who are convinced that there are moral absolutes of right and wrong, and who profess a belief in a true God of right, to be branded as hopelessly insane and mean-spirited. The masses are being taught to detest and revile us.”
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In today’s society there are no absolutes, and anyone teaching them is
considered “insane”. Anyone hearing from “God” is also considered insane—
hearing voices. Yet, a person channeling and hearing from demons is OK—that’s not illegal—that sells books and movie rights.
Children can and have been taken from their parents because the parents teach them about God. This happened to a friend of mine in the early 1970s—I sat in the court room where the attorney for her husband was trying to get their boys taken away from her, interrogated her regarding her hearing from God. When he got her to say that she heard from Him, he addressed the Judge as “this woman is obviously unfit to raise the children, on the basis of mental insanity”. The boys were taken away from this precious Christian woman and given to her husband who raised them in pornography, without “God”.
The “Child Protection” agencies are not there to protect children as much as they are to work with teachers and Pediatricians to get children away from Christian/Messianic parents. If a parent can be accused of teaching something contrary to the government’s (Homeland Security/F.E.M.A.) laws--as in the Bible way, then they are considered inferior parents.
The American President: Head of the world government’s visible rule--publicly announced on CNN and BBC, May 1999, to all the world except America, is boxing in the set-apart ones. There are laws being introduced by Homeland Security that will require a background check on all people flying within the US and out of the U.S. Once martial law is declared to corral the citizens and purge the nation of the “mentally ill” believers and patriots, we will go into a satanic regime, where horrors will be beyond imagination. Right now, we are sending more and more U.S. troops oversees, and bringing in former Nazi and KGB troops, and other foreign troops, into the military in the US to patrol the citizens. These new guys are not even American citizens—but foreign troops that have no mercy on American people.