To the Editor:
In dealing with the homeless population week after week, I see many complicated cases, but every once in a while, we run across what I would call the “perfect storm” of conditions that keeps a client from receiving the lifesaving assistance he or she needs. When determining whether or not someone is eligible to receive housing benefits, mental health plays a critical role in the outcome.
Mental health issues tend to be multi-layered or multi-faceted and complicate the process of trying to provide services, including housing. The obvious approach is to help these individuals get medical or mental health treatment, including providing transportation to doctor’s visits.
But what happens when a person who has mental health conditions denies they need help and refuses to pursue the support services that can help? They live on the margins of life, often placing themselves in dangerous situations, and most times they end up hurting themselves and others.
Current laws dictate adults are better left alone, even if they are not able to make appropriate life choices. New York recently took a different approach to what it means to be a danger to oneself. They determined that being a danger includes the individual not making the right choices about getting medical and mental health treatment and other decisions that would make it possible to obtain stable housing.
One change New York City Mayor Eric Adams wants to see made is to amend the state’s legal definition of “likely to result in serious harm.” He would like it to include clearer and broader language to include people “whose mental illness prevents them from meeting their basic survival needs of food, clothing, shelter or medical care,” as reported in the New York Daily News and carried in The Press of Atlantic City Dec. 2, 2022.
It is probably time we consider adopting this perspective in New Jersey, as well. For more than three months, Cape Hope has provided financial housing assistance for a middle-aged woman who is caught in this perfect storm of conditions. She has a specific, diagnosed mental health condition and because of her mental health issues, she has burned bridges with her family, friends, and even other agencies that have offered assistance.
If certain persons do not have the mental capacity to determine that they need help, or even if they are unable to keep appointments because their mental illness is telling them to do something else, if these people are incapable of making rational choices that can lead to illness or death, what, then, is to be done?
ED. NOTE: Venturini-South is the president and chief executive officer of Cape Hope.
