Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Michigan's dream for the mentally ill quickly turns into a nightmare

By Betty DeRamus / The Detroit News

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When Michigan first began closing state mental hospitals, it seemed like a glorious, sunlit idea: patients would no longer spend their lives warehoused in institutions like crates of cereal.

But many now live in worse circumstances.

They sleep curled up in abandoned cars and busted buses. They sprawl across park benches or snooze on the floors of public rest rooms.

They walk the streets with all of their belongings heaped in shopping carts, and, more and more often, they end up in jails and prisons.

Despite the noble dream of transferring the mentally ill to community mental health facilities, the reality is this: many of Michigan's mentally ill become homeless, unable to fill out forms or provide identification for Supplemental Security Income or other assistance, unable to locate or live with family or friends, unable to stick to the regimen of taking medication or living in community facilities and unwilling to stay in shelters where they fear thievery and attacks.

All of this ran through my mind after a Michigan state trooper was charged recently with shooting to death Eric Williams, a homeless, unarmed man whom family members said had mental and alcohol abuse problems, according to published reports. Williams was described as approaching the trooper in an aggressive way with his pants around his ankles. He allegedly refused an order to halt.

Our criminal justice system will determine if Trooper Jay Morningstar had sound reasons to shoot Williams near the New Detroiter Bar in Detroit's Greektown district April 14.

Who, I wonder, will decide if there is any sane way for an economically depressed state to deal with the people we all see on our streets, asking for bus fare, arguing with unseen enemies, squatting in doorways or trying to follow us inside restaurants.

Who will speak for Detroiter Deborah Flournoy, who said, in a letter unrelated to the Williams case, that her brother "has been in and out of mental institutions all his life ... incarcerated for petty crimes on numerous occasions because he chose this method to obtain food and shelter, because he would grow tired of being on the streets.

"Due to his mental illness, he is unable to take care of himself and his grandiose illusions prevents him from taking help from his family. Once he was arrested in the dead of winter, below zero temperatures, for indecent exposure. This was the only way he knew how to 'come in out of the cold.'

"I also know that when he is on the streets, homeless, he refuses to take his medication because he says it slows him down and he feels the need to 'watch his back.'... Many of the crimes committed today could be prevented if we, as a society, became concerned with our own transients."

The original dream was that mentally ill people who posed no danger to themselves or others would be able to lead at least semi-normal lives in neighborhoods and group homes.

The reality is that large numbers of them end up on our streets, free to come and go, eat or starve, freeze or thrive, live or, quite possibly, die violently.

Betty DeRamus' column runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday in Metro. Reach her at (313) 222-2296 or bderamus@detnews.com.