Home » Virginia Behavioral Health and Developmental Services Deaprtment

A Girl With An Untreated Mental Illness and a Sexual Offender: Who Gets Committed?

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I received a desperate email this week from a father who explained that his daughter has a serious mental disorder but she doesn’t believe anything is wrong with her and consequently will not seek any help. Last week, she assualted him.

Finally, he thought, his daughter had reached a point where he could get her involuntarily committed into a hospital where she could get treatment.  But at her hearing, a special justice ruled that the woman did not meet Virginia’s criteria for involuntary commitment. Even though the woman was psychotic and had attacked her father, the special justice would not involuntarily commit her to a hospital.

“What’s it going to take for me to get my daughter help?” the father asked in his email. “Does she have to kill me?”

I should mention that the father lives in Fairfax County, Virginia, where I also reside. I should also mention that the three special justices, who oversee involuntary commitments here, have a well-deserved reputation in our state for being reluctant to force anyone into treatment.

Contrast that father’s experience with what happened to another Virginia resident who also wrote to me this week. He complained that he had been involuntarily committed to a state facility even though he has never been diagnosed with a mental illness. Click to continue…

Where would you draw the line?

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An investigative report recently released by the Inspector General’s Office in the Virginia Behavioral Health and Developmental Services Department is causing a stir. Each year, the IG is required to make unannounced visits to state facilities that treat  persons with mental disorders and report his findings.   

The section of G. Douglas Bevelacqua’s report that is getting the most attention, especially from the National Alliance on Mental Illness Virginia Chapter  is the IG’s discovery that “streeting” is now a common practice in Virginia. “Streeting” is the term that hospitals use when someone, who should be admitted, is turned out onto the street because there are no beds available. (More on this in a future blog.)

It’s another discovery that Bevelacqua cites that I want to discuss here. 

In his report, Bevelacqua writes that a federal regulation is being so narrowly interpreted by Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli  that as many as ten percent of patients in state run facilities are being denied access to treatment that could help them recover. 

Patients are being denied “medically necessary interventions that would allow them to participate in their treatment.”  They are being “denied palliative care” and their rights to helpful treatment are being “restricted,” the IG claims.

Kenneth T. Cuccinelli is well-known in Virginia mental health circles. When he was running for office, he talked about his efforts as a state legislator to improve mental health services. I spoke to him about the need to reform Virginia’s mental health system and he was well versed in the problems that our state faces. He sees himself as a friend of persons with mental illnesses.

So why is the IG suggesting that Cuccinelli’s office and a federal rule – that was written to protect persons with mental illnesses from abuse –are actually causing great harm to patients in Virginia?

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