Earlier this month, the Biden administration released a 100-page plan on how to reduce America’s estimated homeless population of 500,000 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. With all the red flags that these cities’ “Housing First” programs are caring for people with disabilities, Alaska unfortunately seems to be headed in the same direction.
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 describes the difficulties of caring for acute psychiatric patients in a subsidized Seattle apartment.
It wouldn’t be out of place to put up a sign at the door of supportive housing for people currently homeless with severe mental illness that read, “Abandon all hope of getting in here.” I guess. 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.
Currently, the majority of people with severe mental illness with addiction who are housed in government support facilities are transferred to locked psychiatric facilities or units at one time for compulsory evaluation or treatment. I was. 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 unnecessary dollars, 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 his shoes and he spent four days without shoes or socks. Within 24 hours, I he went through 4 different psychiatric hospitals or wards. In the first unit, I sat on a mattress on the floor while the staff watched me through the door window.
In the third psychiatric ward, I spent half a day. 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 accompanied me to a mental health court where I was released after a short hearing. 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 gone from the early ’60s, 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. A coordinated resource project, the Mental Health Diversion Court, is the closest thing Alaska has in between. The 2023 Alaska Legislature is a good place to start by offering less restrictive psychiatric patient care options.
