Agency’s Answer: Give Mentally Ill More Drugs

From The Orlando (Florida) Sentinel:

Inmates treated for severe mental illness now will have access to a longer supply of psychiatric medication at local jails, a move the Department of Children & Families hopes will prevent them from returning to state hospitals.

DCF officials said Saturday they’ve boosted the number of pills available for accused felons who have returned to jail from state mental hospitals to stand trial from a seven-day to a 30-day day supply.

Now, about 10 percent of inmates discharged from state hospitals end up returning, compounding the shortage of treatment beds available, DCF officials said.

“We are confident the rate will go down,” DCF spokesman Al Zimmerman said.

The extra medication program, which costs $377,000 and will run through June 2007, follows the agency’s decision last week to spend $5 million on 85 new inmate hospital beds.

State law requires those found incompetent to stand trial to be moved to state mental hospitals within 15 days of a judge’s order.

There are about 1,416 treatment beds statewide and about 300 inmates on the waiting list, DCF officials said. In October, inmates waited an average of 82 days for those beds.

Because of the severe shortage, a Pinellas County circuit court judge threatened DCF Secretary Lucy Hadi with jail time for making a “conscious decision to ignore court orders” to provide psychiatric care for inmates. And this month, a 9th Circuit judge gave DCF, the public defender’s office and the jails 60 days to move mentally-ill inmates out of Orange and Osceola jails.

DCF officials said they didn’t have enough money to create more treatment beds.

“We’ve been trying,” Zimmerman said.

The agency’s latest effort to cut the demand for beds through additional medications might not work, advocates and some county officials said. Many counties continue to care for mentally ill inmates after DCF’s supply of pills runs out.