Is it possible for supporters of Mind Freedom, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Mental Health America, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mental Illness Policy and the Treatment Advocacy Center to have a civil discussion and reach a consensus about how everyone can work together to improve mental health care in America?
The Scattergood Foundation hopes so.
How would you design a mental health system?
Last year, Scattergood brought together several prominent mental health advocates for a conference and challenged them to identify the issues that cause dissent and find ways to formulate solutions that would enable all of us to improve the delivery of mental health services to those who need them. Scattergood has now released two position papers and is seeking comments about both.
The subjects: liberty and privacy.
Dr. Lloyd Sederer and Dr. Michael Hogan will officially present the papers on May 5th to some four thousand attendees at the National Council on Behavioral Health conference in Washington D.C. and I have been asked to participate in a panel discussion about the paper’s findings and recommendations. Joining me will be consumer advocate Harvey Rosenthal, Dr. Harold Schwartz, Scattergood President Joe Pyle and the national council’s president and CEO, Linda Rosenberg , along with Dr. Sederer and Dr. Hogan.
If you visit the Scattergood’s website, you can read both papers and offer your comments. You can also fill out a poll that gives you a chance to state whether or not you strongly disagree or agree with the findings of the two papers.
While both are thought-provoking and well done, I suspect the paper on liberty — Liberty and Recovery: Resolving a Mental Health Dilemma — will most stir the pot. That’s because its authors endorse the use of Assisted Outpatient Treatment BUT ONLY after explaining that AOT should be used only as a last resort and would not be needed as frequently if decent community mental health services were put into place. The authors’ state: