NEWS, COMMENTARY, AND ARTS BY PSYCHIATRIC SURVIVORS, MENTAL HEALTH PEERS, AND OUR FAMILIES
VOL. XXXVI NO. 3
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FROM THE HILLS OF VERMONT
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SINCE 1985
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WINTER 2021-22
Legislature Considers Peer Mental Health Bills By BRETT YATES
The first week of Vermont’s legislative session saw the introduction of two bills that would dramatically advance the development of peerbased mental health services in the state. Five peer-led mental health organizations – Alyssum, Another Way, MadFreedom, Pathways Vermont, and Vermont Psychiatric Survivors – drafted the legislation, based in part on a white paper published in 2019. S.194 would establish and maintain a network of seven peer-operated respite centers throughout the state, while S.195 would create an official certification program for peer support specialists. Sen. Cheryl Hooker of Rutland introduced both bills. The first bill defines a peer respite as “a voluntary, short-term, overnight program that provides community-based, traumainformed, and person-centered crisis support and prevention 24 hours a day in a homelike environment to individuals with mental conditions who are experiencing acute distress, anxiety, or emotional pain that if left unaddressed may lead to the need for inpatient hospital services.”
The legislation would require the Department of Mental Health (DMH) to distribute funds annually to peer-run organizations that would maintain respites in Bennington, Brattleboro, Burlington, Rutland, Windsor County, and any one of the three counties of the Northeast Kingdom. Currently, Windsor County hosts Vermont’s only peer respite, Alyssum, which operates two beds in Rochester. As a basis for the proposed expansion, the bill fingers “prolonged waits” in Vermont’s emergency departments, where, however, a
S.194: An act relating
to peer-operated respite centers S.195: An act relating to the certification of mental health peer support specialists
“significant number” of psychiatric patients “do not require inpatient admission.” Rather, many “lack social connectedness” and “seek out inpatient hospitalization to ease this social isolation.” Peer respites can “serve as alternative care settings” for these and other patients. At a nightly cost of $693 per bed, compared to $2,537 at Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital, they can also save the state money by doing so, the legislation asserts. The bill would appropriate $3.5 million from the state’s general fund in fiscal year 2023 for the seven respites, and a pilot program would send an extra $250,000 to two peer-run community centers in Burlington and Montpelier – where Pathways Vermont and Another Way currently operate such facilities – “for the purpose of combining their efforts” with the new respites in the same locations. S.195 could help create a pool of potential staffers for the facilities established by S.194. “Certification can encourage an increase in the number, diversity, and availability of peer support specialists,” the bill states, observing that 46 states already have developed peer (Continued on page 4)
New Use-of-Force Policy for Police Takes Effect By BRETT YATES
Vermont’s first statewide use-of-force policy for police went into effect on Oct. 1, 2021. In preparation, law enforcement officers received in-person training by the Vermont Police Academy in August and September, with a self-identified psychiatric survivor providing instruction on rules addressing encounters with people experiencing “mental impairment.” The policy originated with an executive order issued by Gov. Scott in Aug. 2020, two months after the Minneapolis Police Department’s murder of George Floyd, calling upon the Public Safety Commissioner to establish “best practices on when use of force shall be prohibited” and “under what circumstances proportional use of force may be necessary” for officers across the state. Scott promised to withhold crucial state funding and training from noncompliant municipal police departments.
NEW 988 LIFELINE
By that point, the nationwide political momentum for police reform had already led the General Assembly to resurrect a previously moribund bill, S.119, introduced that January, to permit officers to use “only the force objectively reasonable, necessary, and proportional” to achieve “a lawful law enforcement objective.” As Act 165, it passed during a special session in September, amid objections by law enforcement that led the legislature to amend the statute the following April to loosen its ban on chokeholds in cases where “deadly force is justified.” In written testimony to the legislature, the ACLU of Vermont praised Act 165 as “the nation’s strongest statutory standard for police use of force” and, noting that “people of color and people with mental health conditions are disproportionately impacted by policing,” called it “an important step to making Vermont a place that is more just and equitable for everyone who
6 The Arts10
calls this state home.” Certain provisions bear particular relevance to police conduct during mental health emergencies. One of them prohibits officers from using “deadly force against a person based on the danger that person poses to himself or herself.” In 2018, Vermont State Police killed Benjamin Gregware, a reportedly suicidal man who was holding a gun to his own head at the time of the shooting. 20 V.S.A. § 2368(b)(5) compels restraint in dealings with civilians in observably extreme mental states, among others: “When a law enforcement officer knows that a subject’s conduct is the result of a medical condition, mental impairment, developmental disability, physical limitation, language barrier, drug or alcohol impairment, or other factor beyond the subject’s control, the officer shall take that information into account in determining (Continued on page 5)
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Trieste Still Stands