In the headlines this evening, I saw an article on how Hawaii is planning to pay for homeless persons to 'have a flight home' in an effort to save some money. You can see that article by clicking here.
According to this article, Hawaii hopes to save some of the cost associated with food, shelter and medical costs. What about those people among the homeless population that have mental illness?
How does 'flying them home' and basically putting the burden of care on another state help? So now, instead of 'bus therapy' are we going to have 'plane therapy'? How does burying your head in the sand and hoping someone else will take care of things for you solve any problems?
What if Hawaii were to apply for federal housing programs that help fund assisted living for people with physical and mental disabilities? The Olmstead act provides for money to be used in this way to help provide housing for persons with mental illness.
What if Hawaii were to use the money for the plane trips to build some more community mental health centers so that people could get treatment instead of being homeless? What if these community mental health centers ran Assertive Community Treatment models of care as endorsed by NAMI? Then people could get the support they need when they are in crisis, and they could build the skills they need to create a productive and healthy life.
Flying people back to their home state will not work. If they do not have medication and health care, how can they ever hope to get well and stay well? Dumping people like human garbage and passing the buck to another state do not solve the problem. This type of behavior only increases stigma and prevents meaningful treatment and support. How many people will trust enough to ever get services for their mental illness if they fear being shipped off to another state, dropped off and forced to fend for themselves?
How can our nation say that we need to help those with mental illness and then respond by sending them to another state?
Why don't we just speak the truth? We do not want tragedies like Aurora or Sandy Hook, but hey, it is not my state's job to fix it. We want the violence to end, but we are not willing to help in any real or meaningful way. Isn't that the job of a different state?
You don' have to ship off the people with mental illness to a different state. They are constantly in the state of indifference.
And now for a message from our life coach cats:
That's sad. I agree with you and the Director of the National Coalition for Homeless that if it's truly voluntary AND there has been a confirmed support system back "home" then it would be great. It could be a new lease on life. Especially if the support system is a healthy one! I can't imagine if there was a healthy support system back home that they wouldn't already be there and the reason they aren't is because they aren't healthy either mentally or physically, thus bringing us back to your good points.
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