The Severly Mentally Ill and The Government

Long-term service needed by chronically disabled people to carry out activities of daily life have traditionally been viewed as targeted to the elderly. However, these services are needed also by persons with cognitive or mental impairment from a severe mental illness.

At the present time long term hospitalization is restricted by age; if you are under 21 or 65 and older there you can take advantage of the state’s Medicaid assistance and get the help you need with long term hospitalization in state hospitals. However, there are people with severe chronic mental illnesses that need the time to be stabilized on proper medication. Sometimes for non responsive people the time needed to be stabilized and t5o be able to function in society is lo0nger than 30 or 90 days.  Medication is the only option for severe mental disorders like Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. 

That such services may also be needed by younger persons with disabilities, including not only individuals with physical disabilities but also persons with cognitive or mental impairments due to mental retardation and other developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injury, or severe mental illness. Currently people with physically disorders are covered by Medicaid but for the mentally ill there is no such provision in the laws of Medicaid.  The widespread closure of the state hospitals has added to the discrimination of the mentally ill.

Widespread homelessness among mentally ill New Yorkers became a fact of life in the 1980s due to the failure of policy makers to create adequate community-based care for mentally ill people released from long-term hospitalizations. Deinstitulization has become a failure of the government to give its’ citizens basic human rights.  It did not create the promise of programs to provide psychiatrically disabled New Yorkers with whatever assistance they need to move from the streets to independent living and employment. The goal was to give clients the tools they need to live more and more independently. It unsuccessfully provided the necessary aid to it’s’ citizens and fellow man.

Indigent persons who need treatment in a hospital can count on Medicaid to pay for diseases of the heart, liver, blood and most physical body organs. Medicaid will not cover the individual if he or she is between the ages of 21 and 65 and has a disease in their brain and needs care in a psychiatric hospital. The Federal government's IMD Exclusion prohibits Medicaid from covering any treatment in state and private psychiatric hospitals and other IMDs. To view the brain the organ the body needs to survive is a travesty and a tragedy and totally biased and discrimination of the highest degree. The mentally ill are people you may know it may even be a family member mental illness does not discriminate it can strike anyone any age any nationality.

Medicaid's denial of coverage results in homelessness, incarceration, victimization and even death for many people who are so ill they are unable to care for themselves. These people desperately need aid to conquer their diseases contact you state Medicaid office, call your congressman appeal to the government to repeal the IMD exclusion law which is outdated, a total failure and prejudice taken to the extreme.