File under: Stuff I could do if I didn't have to go to work...

MEDIA ADVISORY: Briefing on Civil Rights of People with Mental Illnesses

The Bazelon Center wishes to express its deepest sympathies to the families, friends and peers of the Virginia Tech shooting victims. This tragedy has raised an array of questions surrounding mental health services and the civil rights of people with mental illnesses.

WHAT: Media Briefing with Bazelon Center Executive Director, Dr. Robert Bernstein

WHEN: Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 9AM (Breakfast will be served)

WHERE: 1101 15th Street, NW Washington, DC Suite 1212

WHY: To discuss legal and policy issues surrounding mental health and the civil rights of people with mental illness.

In the wake of this tragedy, many students may suffer emotional distress. It is critically important that counseling and other mental health services be available to them and that they feel safe asking for help. Seeking help is often difficult.

The goal of campus policies should be to maximize the likelihood that students who require mental health treatment receive it and to ensure that their problems not reach crisis proportions before services become available. To that end, schools should take actions to de-stigmatize mental illness, encourage students to seek help early, remove barriers to seeking treatment, and ensure that students will not be penalized when they ask for help.

Unfortunately, some schools have created a paradox for students in need: while encouraging students who struggle with mental health problems to seek assistance, the school administration then applies disciplinary measures when students take this difficult step, in an effort to remove mental health problems from the campus. Last year, the Bazelon Center represented a George Washington University student who voluntarily sought hospital treatment for depression and then faced disciplinary action by the university administration and was suspended from school. In another suit, we represented a Hunter College student who voluntarily admitted herself to the hospital for treatment of depression and as a consequence was locked out of her dorm room by the college administration.

By responding in such a way, schools create an appalling dilemma for students in crisis: either jeopardize their education by asking for help or forego needed mental health treatment. Such approaches may actually increase the risk of harm by discouraging students from getting help for themselves or their friends. The Bazelon Center's successful representation of students who have been punished for getting mental health care is aimed at breaking down this shameful obstacle. In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, the Bazelon Center urges that educational institutions do all they can to identify and to remove barriers to youths' getting help. We feel strongly that meaningful remedies rest not in abruptly diluting legal protections for people with mental health needs, but in addressing the enormous gaps in service availability

All students should know whom to call when they or their fellow students are in trouble and should have ready access to counseling and other support. Moreover, mental health programs need to work in partnership with schools to make mental health service readily available, including getting out of their clinics and reaching out to students who are at obvious risk.

One can only hope that this tragedy will focus constructive attention on how difficult it is for youth to connect with the help they need.

I wish I could be there. I wonder if they'll have coffee and donuts? We'll never know...