Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin “is going to use this tragedy of losing our State Hospital during (hurricane) Irene as an opportunity to deliver the best quality community-based mental health care in the country.” The hospital will be replaced by a 16-bed “last resort,” with the state’s focus shifting to building a network of smaller, community-based approaches.
For those of you following this story, it appears that the Governor reached a compromise with legistlators to go ahead with plans for a 25 bed facility rather than the 16 beds he had proposed. This could change in the next few years as a variety of community programs are funded and become available to help reduce the need for hsopitalization.
What sort of community treatment is being proposed? Forced drugging or “ACT/AOT”? I doubt this community based treatment idea will be a good idea after years of brainwashing the public into thinking that neuroleptic drugs are essential treatments.
There are a wide variety of programs and one that appears likely to be funded is a Soteria house.