A federal judge gave final approval October 1, 2010 to an agreement worked out between the State of Illinois and a coalition of legal services organizations, for individuals with mental illnesses to move out of Illinois’ outmoded, segregated nursing home system and receive the services they need in the community.
Approximately 4,300 persons with mental illnesses will be given the choice to move out of large nursing homes known as “Institutions for Mental Diseases” (IMDs) and into community-based settings with the support they need to be successful.
Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director for the ACLU of Illinois, one of five legal organizations representing the plaintiffs, said, “There simply is no rational, medical reason for forcing persons with mental illnesses to receive the treatment they need in a large, institutional setting living with hundreds of other people with mental illnesses. We do not require such living arrangements for other diseases – it is indefensible for those with mental illness.”
The Illinois Governor’s Nursing Home Safety Task Force, after examining the state’s troubled and scandalized nursing home system, recently concluded that “(t)here is … remarkable consensus that many people currently admitted to nursing homes with serious mental illness would be better cared for in specially designed and monitored community residential settings.”
An individualized plan for each person will be developed. One can only hope that these plans will not rely on harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs or other abusive psychiatric treatments.
For more information on the alternatives to abusive psychiatric treatments and harmful psychiatric drugs, download the CCHR report, “What is the Alternative to Psychotropic Drugs” from http://cchrstl.org/alternatives.shtml.