Society has failed the mentally ill over and over again. Only today in the media there was a story of a woman in New York who had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility who died after falling to the floor in the emergency room of the psychiatric hospital and laying there unattended. A videotape revealed that numerous employees of the facility saw her lying on the ground convulsing and then motionless but no one did anything to help her for over an hour. The woman had been forcibly taken to such facility 24 hours before yet had received no treatment at the facility. First of all how do you leave anyone who you have involuntarily committed waiting for twenty-four hours to get basic mental health treatment? Second of all how do you just leave someone lying on the floor after they have collapsed? This is sadly the way that too many mentally ill people are treated by society.

 Society doesn’t treat the mentally ill with the respect they are entitled to. Too often the mentally ill are simply labeled crazy and ignored. For many people, if the mentally ill are out of sight they are out of mind. Agencies that are supposed to work with the mentally ill often fail them as this psychiatric hospital did. This woman was treated worse than an animal. When I take my cat to the vet he doesn’t have to wait twenty-four hours to be seen, if my cat were to collapse the staff would check on him. How is it that we as society treat some people worse than we treat our pets?

 We have mental institutions that warehouse the mentally ill and people who are different because society hasn’t found out how to deal with them. With such neglect, people are not allowed to achieve their full potential.

 Sadly, society hasn’t moved forward as much as we should have in advancing the rights of the mentally ill.This inexcusable situation of a mentally ill woman dying alone and uncared for on the floor of a facility that was supposed to help her did not happen fifty years ago but happened today. What happened to this woman is a clear violation of human rights. Society has not done enough to move forward the rights of the mentally ill and to take care of their needs. Maybe if society had not intervened in this instance and involuntarily committed this woman she might still be alive today.

 But what can we do to help?We can do many things to help make life easier for people with mental illnesses.  You can go to the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign website to learn more at http://nostigma.org If you are a college student, you can get involved with or start a chapter of Active Minds on your campus. www.activemindsoncampus.orgYou can also get involved with the Jed Foundation. www.jedfoundation.org You can work to pass the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act to end discrimination against people with mental illnesses receiving access to treatment that they need. As Hubert Humphrey once said, “The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life - the children; the twilight of life - the elderly; and the shadows of life - the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” Hopefully one day with greater public consciousness and involvement the mentally ill will get the respect they deserve and that we as a just society owe them.