America’s Compassion Actually Hurts Disabled People

In December 2022, the Biden administration released a 100-plus page plan on how to reduce America’s estimated 500,000 homeless population by 25% over the next two years. The “Housing First” program is not without criticism, as state and federal agencies have a history of not applying enough effort or incentives to get people off drugs and alcohol.

Major cities in Alaska, like Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland, face similar challenges in helping the homeless and mentally ill. Alaska, unfortunately, seems to be headed in the same direction, as the “housing first” programs in these cities are all red flags when it comes to disability care.

On November 20, Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow published a lengthy article titled “Fixing Broken Lovely,” which was reprinted in several newspapers, including Alaska. In the story, psychiatric nurse Naomi Morris described the difficulties of caring for acute psychiatric patients in a subsidized apartment in Seattle.

Today, it wouldn’t be out of place to hang a sign at the door of supportive housing for people who are homeless due to severe mental illness and read, “Abandon hope if you enter here.” . According to Seattle’s Downtown Emergency Services Center, at least half of its clients are using methamphetamines or opioids, and many are contaminated with fentanyl. not.

My impression is that many people self-medicate to deal with stress and past trauma when they are not incentivized by government programs. I have a concern. These programs have a darker side that even supporters find difficult to explain. Especially the time and effort of managing personal decline.

Most people with severe co-occurring mental illness and addiction and who are now in government-assisted facilities have been transferred to locked psychiatric facilities or wards for compulsory evaluation or treatment. I have. What happens to a person at these facilities can often have lasting adverse effects on their recovery.

Hospital administrators, hospital employee unions, and city and state officials are committed to thinking outside the box and adopting programs that minimize trauma to mentally ill patients during treatment or transport as much as possible. resisting. I estimate that reducing the trauma experienced by psychiatric patients in psychiatric hospitals, or “institutional trauma,” could save millions of dollars in unnecessary costs, both for the state and for patients.

While traveling through Seattle in 2002, I had a psychotic break at the airport. I was taken into custody and taken by ambulance to a psychiatric unit. While in the hospital, security guards took off my shoes and I spent four days without shoes or socks. Within 24 hours, I went through four different psychiatric hospitals or units.

I spent half a day in the third psychiatric ward. Meanwhile, I was strapped to a gurney in a row of occupied gurneys in a crowded hallway waiting for a bed. Around me were patients similarly strapped to gurneys begging to drink water or go to the bathroom. The staff simply walked by, ignoring the legitimate demands of those whom the government determined had a disability. Being left on a stretcher is traumatic.

At the last stop, I was transferred to the West Seattle Psychiatric Unit, where staff gave me daily antipsychotic injections for three days. A friend of mine in Anchorage contacted a patient advocate in Seattle, who took me to a mental health court. After a short hearing, I was released. The hospital gave me a prescription for Prozac. A mental health advocate helped me buy new shoes and drove me to the Seattle airport. I got on the plane and flew back to Anchorage.

Saslow reports that Seattle still doesn’t have enough beds for psychiatric patients. I was released from the Seattle West Psychiatric Unit on a prescription for antipsychotics without follow-up.In 2003, in Anchorage, I faced the exact same situation after being released on a prescription for medication from the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. but there was no follow up from API staff or social workers.

Alaska has changed from the early 1960s, when psychotic patients were locked up indefinitely, to today, when they are often thrown out on the streets. No attempt has ever been made to find the midpoint between the two extremes. Cooperative Resource Project, a mental health transformation court, is the closest thing Alaska has to the middle. This would be a good place to start for the 2023 Alaska Legislative Assembly, offering less restrictive options for psychiatric patient care.

Faith J. Myers is the author of the book Going Crazy in Alaska: A history of Alaska’s treatment of Alaska’s Treatment of Psychiatric Patients and the e-book Mental Health Care in Alaska 2022: a report card by a original Psychiatric Patient.

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