Deeds in happier times with his son, Gus.
Before anyone feels sorry for state mental health officials who are being sued by Virginia state Senator Creigh Deeds, they should do what my favorite columnist at The Washington Post has done. Take time to read several blogs that I wrote about an Inspector General report that was issued twenty-two months before Deeds was told there were no local mental health beds available and was sent home with his son, Gus, who desperately needed psychiatric treatment.
A fair-minded but tough state Inspector General named G. Douglas Bevelacqua wrote a damning report in 2012 that exposed how Virginia hospitals were “streeting” psychotic patients. That was the term emergency room doctors used when they turned patients away because there were no crisis care beds available. Bevelacqua, who cared passionately about mental health reform, warned the state’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services that Virginia had a bed shortage problem that needed to be fixed. Immediately.
No one listened.
After the Deeds’ tragedy, state mental health officials issued a self-serving report that made it sound as if they had paid attention to Bevelacqua’s findings, but simply hadn’t been able to implement his recommendations in time to prevent the Deeds’ tragedy. Bull.
Rather than fessing up, those officials began circling the wagons, so much so, that Bevelacqua resigned in protest, claiming that his boss was pressuring him to water down an investigation of how state mental health officials had bungled the entire “streeting” crisis. His boss, Michael F.A. Morehart subsequently released the report that Bevelacqua had refused to sign and did exactly what Bevelacqua had predicted. His report didn’t take anyone to task for their failure to address “streeting” in time to save Gus Deeds.
The result: Gus Deeds was dead, his family was devastated, whistleblower Bevelacqua was out of the IG’s office, and the state mental health department declared itself blameless and actually promoted the employee who had failed to implement Bevelacqua’s recommendations before the Deeds tragedy.
Thanks Petula Dvorak for taking time to read my blogs and contact me about the IG’s warnings. (type Bevelacqua’s name into my web page search engine to read them all) Her column was published today — 1-8-2015.
Va. Sen. Creigh Deeds is using a $6 million lawsuit over his son’s suicide to force change
By Petula Dvorak in the Washington Post
Is the Creigh Deeds lawsuit all about the money? You bet it is.
Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) sued his state for $6 million this week, blaming its dysfunctional mental-health system and an incompetent evaluator for the death of his bipolar son, Gus.
Move on? When your child is dead? When you will bear the physical scars of his burst of violence for the rest of your life? Not going to happen.
Because things went wrong the night Gus desperately needed help. Because the system that all Virginia taxpayers fund should work. Because people need to do their jobs right. Because there but for the grace of God go any of us. Or our children.
Austin “Gus” Deeds, a 24-year-old college student, stabbed and slashed his father 13 times, then killed himself with a rifle on a November morning two years ago, just hours after his family begged the mental-health system to help find a psychiatric bed for their troubled son.
“Virginia’s mental health care system failed my son, Gus,” Deeds said in a statement. “I am committed that my son’s needless death shall not be in vain, and that no other Virginia family suffer this tragedy.”
The family had been working with Gus on treatment and therapy for years after he was diagnosed as bipolar when he was 20. And they saw a bad cycle coming that night in November and got a court order that gave them only six hours to find a place to take him, a place where he would be safe from harming himself or others.
A lot went wrong in those six hours. A mental-health evaluator also named in the suit, Michael Gentry, said he called 10 of the 30 places that could take him, but phone records showed he really called seven. He gave up too early and sent Gus Deeds home.
The mental illness took hold of Gus’s brain, and a true tragedy unfolded.
His mom predicted something terrible would happen. You know what? The state sort of predicted it, too, a year before it happened.
“Bull,” responded Pete Earley, a former Post reporter and Virginia author who writes extensively on mental-health issues, including a book about navigating the mental-health system with his son. Before Deeds even filed his suit, Earley was writing about the need for accountability.
“A system that is broken will never change unless the public servants running it take responsibility for their actions and are held accountable for mistakes,” he said in a post on his website.
Will $6 million bring Gus Deeds back? Nope. Does Creigh Deeds plan a life of luxury at the taxpayers’ expense? Not likely.
But a lawsuit and the threat of a monetary loss may be the only motivator that works.
Just ask the family of David Rosenbaum, a former New York Times reporter who died after mistakes were made the night he was robbed and beaten in Northwest Washington, where he lived.
“It can be a motivator for change, a lawsuit, as well as a punishment for the people who have made a huge mistake,” said Marcus Rosenbaum, the victim’s brother.
His family filed suit against the city and Howard University Hospital. They got a cash settlement with the hospital, but the only condition of the no-cash settlement with the city was that it work on reforming the Emergency Medical Services system.
“I don’t know what else could we have done,” Rosenbaum said.
But Deeds is a lawmaker. Isn’t he the guy who gets the stuff done?
Some stuff, yeah. Deeds helped work on a law that the legislature passed and Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) signed that gives folks more time than a few hours to find a psychiatric bed for patients under custody orders. It also calls for an online registry of available beds. We can do that with hotel rooms or baseball tickets or Uber. Why shouldn’t we do that with hospital beds?
Even as a lawmaker, there is only so much Deeds can do to make people do their jobs, to pay attention, to care. To act like it’s their own kin out there in trouble.
The lawsuit is about accountability. And in too many ways, if you want people to listen, paying a serious price is the only language they understand.
Petula is a columnist for The Washington Post’s local team who writes about homeless shelters, gun control, high heels, high school choirs, the politics of parenting, jails, abortion clinics, mayors, modern families, strip clubs and gas prices, among other things.
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