Letters to the Editor - January 17, 2013

Do we reform mental health care ?

There has been a renewed focus in the news about gun control due to the Sandy Hook shootings.I think another sad part of this tragedy is the fact that gun control is the first thing that comes to everyone’s minds when bad things like this happen. I think one other thing that needs to be explored is the mental health system in the country. The face of mental health treatment has changed in the last two decades and not for the better.

Facilities are being closed and very ill people are not being followed up with to monitor medications and treatment. As someone who has been on both sides of the mental health system, caring for mentally ill people and being diagnosed with mental illness, I can tell you it’s an underserved discipline. People who receive out-patient therapy see a therapist maybe once a week and the psychiatrist maybe every three months. The psychiatrist then only spends a total of five minutes, just enough time to write a prescription and move on to the next. If the patient chooses not to continue with therapy, they are not generally followed up with. I am not blaming the therapists, they often have a heavy patient load. I guess it bothers me that after all that happened with innocent people getting gunned down in the past year that our government never considered mental health care reform.

The buildings at the now closed Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center sit and rot. There were patients at Harlem Valley who had lived there since they were very young and it was the only kind of life they ever knew. What happened to these people, is what I often wonder. Even though the treatments have changed for treating mental illness, I believe that the real problems occur when state and federal budgets have to take a cut. Then, it’s the sick and elderly or kids who get the short end of the stick.

As it stands, the closing of Taconic DDSO in Wassaic, N.Y., is rumored to happen in the next year or so. The state of New York is not making a plan known to staff or consumers’ families as to where they plan to move these people. Something has to change to get mentally ill and mentally challenged people the follow-up care they need and deserve.

When people hear a group home may open in their neighborhoods they panic. People need to educate themselves and should not assume a group home would be a bad thing. Being in a group home means medications are being monitored and staff is there to follow up, 24/7.

Eleanor O’Toole
Millerton, N.Y.

Connecticut Common Cause, Archibald Cox, ethics codes and angels

A free society depends upon a high degree of mutual trust. The public will not give that trust to officials who are not seen to be impartially dedicated to the general public interest, nor will they give trust to those high in government who violate the rule of law they ask citizens to obey at the expense of self-interest, or to those who present government as the place where one feathers his own nest, [or] exchanges favors with friends and former associates.
— Archibald Cox, Common Cause chairman emeritus

I found the above quotation in the Connecticut Common Cause 2004 Municipal Ethics Survey, which is apropos to the code of ethics (COE) debate currently underway in Salisbury.

I learned from reading the Common Cause document that the COE and commission draft are mainstream documents for open, honest governance here in Connecticut, for municipalities of any size. The mania of opposition against the code of ethics and ethics commission for the past year is the typical reaction of small towns, according to Connecticut Common Cause. The study adds that the small towns are the ones most in need of COEs and enforcement capability.

At the Dec. 15 COE workshop, attorney Bill Morrill opined that he has not been aware of any significant issues in town government, that town boards manage ethical issues themselves and the Board of Selectmen could take care of any other small issues that arise. He also claimed that codes of ethics and commissions are only necessary in our large towns and cities while Salisbury has been historically free of significant ethical issues.

Mr. Morrill and the other opponents of the COE and commission are only a few of several thousand people in Salisbury, many of whom do not share this Utopian view of government in our town and state. Everyone deserves a straightforward administrative process for clarifying and investigating ethical issues. When some ethics issue arises, serious enough to disturb Mr. Morrill’s complacency, Salisbury should have an appropriate process already in place to deal with it in a timely manner.

If Morrill is convinced we live in a Utopia populated by angels instead of human beings, perhaps he should also tell the General Assembly there is no need for the Statewide Grievance Committee to investigate citizen complaints of ethics violations by attorneys.

The suggestion that the BOS can take care of any other issues that might arise is nonsense. The political imbalance of every BOS virtually guarantees enforcement of ethical standards will be biased in favor of the majority party, rampant with favoritism and protection offered to political supporters, campaign contributors, old friends, college chums and associates, etc.

The Connecticut Common Cause Survey and Archibald Cox’s quotation reassure me that the draft COE and Commission ordinance, that many individuals have helped me develop, is the right thing for Salisbury.

Townspeople are invited to Town Hall for another workshop Feb. 2 at 9 a.m. Read the COE online, get a copy at Town Hall, and bring your suggestions.

Mark Lauretano
Selectman
Salisbury