Those that consistently promote the message of “Recognize, Reach Out, Receive Treatment and Recover” would be well served if they took a moment to actually consider how grim reality can be. That someone died absent a discharge plan is not surprising. That more don’t die when a discharge plan can be as little as “Patient will return to ……” is amazing. Even when a discharge plan appears to be extensive and well developed absent pre-discharge care coordination, and follow-up with both the consumer and post discharge service providers, it can be no more then a piece of paper.

It is important to acknowledge that it wasn’t a Texas hospital which led to Raquel Padilla’s death, it was a team of individual human beings employed in their professional capacities at this hospital who putatively cared for her welfare and well being and prepared her for discharge. There is a difference. We might well wonder if these same professionals did any better for Raquel Padilla when she was an inpatient.

From San Antonio State’s Hospital’s Admission Information:

“The team of professionals will develop an appropriate treatment plan with the patient. If in-patient hospitalization is deemed unnecessary by the treatment team, the MHA is notified and discharge planning is initiated. If in-patient treatment is necessary, the treatment team will continue to provide in-patient psychiatric treatment to prepare the patient for discharge, and/or transfer to an alternate placement.”

We do it for any medical procedure, ensuring that if a person needs home nursing for wound care and maintenance, they get it. Why wouldn’t we do the same minimum for someone who has a mental illness, ensuring they, at the very least, get to where they’re going so someone else can look after them?

Indeed, the state may have been technically well within its rights for behaving as it did. And perhaps that’s the point — when did we, as a society, stop using basic common sense (and a little human compassion) to care for folks who just need a little extra attention? An extra 10 minutes spent with this individual may have prevented their needless death. But since it wasn’t anybody’s “job,” nobody did it.

Technically correct. Humanely sad.

2,999 didn’t die…..

Of every 3,000 sane people that enters an automobile…how many die?

There is a new law that mental illnesses are to receive the same coverage as “medical” illnesses. I’m grateful for this new law, but I’ll have to depend on God for the next year still. Because the new law does not come in effect for 12 months!!! If I had a broken leg would they make me wait a year to get treatment?

Just another example of how mentally ill citizens are treated with no respect nor concern. After all, it’s ONLY IN MY HEAD, right? One problem with that idiotic conclusion — that thing in my head runs EVERY function of my body. Perhaps people could consider this!!

“YOU ARE WARNED, THIS IS TEXAS YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN”

This is what people mean by state’s rights.
The right of the state to abuse those the community does not like.

“YOU ARE WARNED, THIS IS TEXAS YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN”

of course here in NYC our Police Commissioner said of a bipolar man who was tassered of a ledge,

“