- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-28/son-who-hears-voices-discovers-american-health-care-fatally-dysfunctional.html
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-04/sleeping-in-vermont-dumpster-shows-psychiatric-cuts-cost.html
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-26/rape-charges-show-risk-as-states-ignore-forced-drug-laws.html
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-27/bullets-are-safety-net-as-64-mentally-ill-die-at-hands-of-police.html
List date(s) this work was published or aired.
“Son Who Hears Voices” – 2/28/12; “Rape Charges Show Danger” – 11/26/12; “Bullets Are Safety Net: – 12/27/12
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
The title of this series — Untreated & Unsafe — underscores the human cost of the failing mental health care system in the U.S. People are dying, and not just the mentally ill but those around them, because state hospitals are continuing to close, acute-care hospital stays are shrinking and laws designed to keep people on their medicine involuntarily are largely ignored. This series aims higher than the familiar warnings from advocates and others who frame the toll of hospital-bed and service cuts as issues that will sooner or later catch up with us. These stories profile those who have already died and their families who have struggled to take care of them in the face of bureaucratic parsimony and indifference. The reader meets the Knapps of Ohio. They say their son, Adam, a bright young leader of his peers who developed schizophrenia, was released from the hospital too early. He died in a car crash of his doing and took the life of a woman about his age in another car. The reader meets Salih Mahdi, a young Georgia football star whose schizophrenia fueled a cruel catalog of criminal wrongdoing. His mother struggled for years to make his caregivers simply use the state law already on the books to force her son to take his medicine. In Vermont, young people were handcuffed to emergency-room gurneys for lack of a psychiatric bed. In California, Michael Mahoney, 36, was in a psychiatric unit just 45 hours before he was released. He was still delusional, his family said. A week later, he was shot by police as he pointed a gun first at himself and then at them. Police shooting the mentally ill is one of the most significant findings of the series. Bloomberg News reveals 64 people with mental illness or mental-health issues had been fatally shot by police in 2012. That’s about three times the number police indicated in a 2009 U.S. Department of Justice survey, the last year for which statistics are available.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Freedom of Information requests were made in two cases. A request made to the New York City Police Department for the number of mentally ill people shot by officers is still being processed, as is a request for data from the U.S. Justice Department. Medical records were obtained through family members who had guardianship or were named executors of a deceased person’s estate. The unfilled FOI requests did not make much difference
Explain types of human sources used.
Doctors, nurses, lawyers, family members, academics, advocates were all useful to the reporting. Graphic artists and video specialists were invaluable in the presentation.
Results:
Discussions are under way among Georgia state lawmakers to strengthen involuntary outpatient commitment laws.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
No.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
Give yourself plenty of lead time to wait for record requests.