Virginia’s psychiatric hospitals are overcrowded with older people with aggressive forms of dementia. Virginia commits elderly people to psych hospitals when their behavior becomes too difficult for their families or long-term care providers to manage.
They are locked up with no possessions or visitors, and stripped of their rights. And they often become stuck because Virginia’s long-term care providers are ill-equipped to manage behavioral issues, and they refuse to take them into their homes.
Luanne Rife intended in 2020 to explore the reasons this continues to occur in Virginia, the effect on the state’s budget and the lack of interest and willpower by lawmakers to address the underlying causes that lead to institutionalizing the elderly in the most restrictive way.
She had planned to look at models in other states and prompt conversations in Richmond. The pandemic, though, altered the course. Rife would spend most of the year writing 200-plus stories on the coronavirus.
She knew the pandemic was also having an impact on state’s psychiatric hospitals. Geriatric admissions continued to grow, and the virus spread in these facilities, claiming lives. She filed a few dailies, and also picked up the threads to pull together more impactful pieces in the Committed series.
As a result of her stories, the commission formed seven years ago to reform the state’s mental health system finally is addressing this most troublesome and costly aspect, and is exploring solutions to stop locking away elderly people with dementia.