DATE: Sunday, November 16, 1997             TAG: 9711140006

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

MENTAL HEALTH MEEK ADVOCATES

Yet another federal agency has issued a scathing report about Virginia's services for the mentally ill.

The latest critic is the Center for Mental Health Services. The target is the Department for Rights of Virginians with Disabilities (DRVD), which is federally mandated to advocate for the state's mentally ill.

A findings of a recent site review can be summed up as follows: The DRVD staff is well-intentioned and succeeding in a few areas. But overall, they're doing a poor job of protecting the mentally ill, and things aren't likely to get better without fundamental change.

This is precisely what advocates for the mentally ill have been saying for years. Finding a fix should be high on the agenda of the incoming Gilmore administration.

The same problems detected by the Center for Mental Health Services have been documented earlier, in this space and others. The DRVD, as currently structured, is too beholden to state government to act as an aggressive, independent critic. And resources are too scant to do the job.

Some particulars, as noted by the federal officials:

DRVD initiated little litigation on behalf of individual clients and no major litigation, class actions or nonlitigation advocacy on behalf of groups of individuals with mental illness during the past six years. This is unacceptable.

DRVD appears to lack the capacity to undertake major litigation. The agency's two in-house attorneys spend most of their time managing private lawyers contracted to represent individual clients. More internal expertise is needed.

The agency has failed to address systemic problems in Virginia's treatment of the mentally ill, either in legislatively or in the courts. For instance, it's widely acknowledged in mental health circles that Virginia puts too many people in institutions because community services are so poor. But DRVD hasn't been a force for change.

There are numerous indications that DRVD is under the thumb of higher state authorities. Press releases must be approved by the same Cabinet member who oversees the state Mental Health Department, an obvious deterrent to open criticism. The attorney general, who represents state mental hospitals, must sign off when attorneys to represent patients through DRVD are hired. And so on.

The quality of advocacy, based on a sampling of client records, is ``unsubstantial.'' It ``did not demonstrate clear proactive advocacy interventions.''

Such a conclusion is not surprising. Remember, DRVD is the agency contacted by Gloria Huntley for help in the months before she died at Central State Hospital in June 1996. Her complaints received minimal attention. Huntley spent 300 hours in the last month of her life strapped and in solitary confinement, a Draconian treatment plan.

The starting point for change must be greater independence from state government. The current system, making a watchdog agency report to the very officials it's supposed to oversee, is ludicrously cozy.

Our solution is the privatization of DRVD, a step called for by Maggie Hager (wife of Virginia's new lieutenant governor-elect) when she headed DRVD a few years back. In contrast, the Center for Mental Health Services urges establishment of the department as an independent agency, such as the State Corporation Commission or the Virginia Higher Education Tuition Trust Fund.

The precise mechanism is less important than the absolute imperative that the DRVD be unshackled. It needs to do its job, which is to challenge a state that has put the needs of the mentally ill on the back burner for too many years.

How many federal reports will it take before Virginia accepts responsibility for the care of this vulnerable group of citizens? No more, if the Gilmore administration chooses to act. It should commits itself firmly to the reforms needed to create an independent, empowered DRVD.

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