New Jersey to release 300 people from psychiatric facilities as part of Olmstead lawsuit settlement

From The Star-Ledger. In the picture, Senator Garrett W. Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Glen Gardener, Hunterdon County, which currently houses 85 patients eligible for release.

TRENTON -- Nearly 300 patients stranded inside the state's psychiatric hospitals for more than a year because of a lack of housing and outpatient treatment services will be discharged over the next five years, under a lawsuit settlement announced July 29 by a disability advocacy group and the state Department of Human Services.

The 2005 lawsuit contended New Jersey's five psychiatric hospitals routinely and illegally confined hundreds of patients every year who are medically ready to leave but languish because they don't have an affordable place to live with nearby treatment services.

Without the state committing to "fix the problem by a specific date," according to the lawsuit by Disability Rights New Jersey, the state violates the 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision known as Olmstead, which required people with disabilities be allowed to live in the least restrictive setting possible.

The settlement now requires the state within five years to discharge 297 patients waiting for more than a year for housing and outpatient care, and to create affordable and supervised housing for 1,065 future patients leaving hospitals, or as an alternative to inpatient care.

At the end of five years, the state also must adhere to a rule that no patient waiting for discharge - known as "conditional extension pending placement'' - will wait longer than four months.

"We would have liked a faster discharge but it's certainly much better than it is now,'' said Joseph Young, the executive director for Disability Rights, formerly New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc. when the lawsuit was filed. "We've got a plan, and movement toward implementing the plan.''

The state will commit $5 million a year toward carrying out the settlement starting immediately, said Deputy Human Services Commissioner Kevin Martone, who blame the state's prolonged budget problems for delaying the settlement.

"Philosophically, we were on the same page but there are the practical realities we face in state government, and that is what took time,'' Martone said.

As of July 10, officials said 735 of the roughly 1,900 patients in state hospitals were medically cleared to leave. That includes 248 patients from Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Camden County; 215 patients in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris County; 187 in the Trenton hospital in Mercer County and 85 at the Senator Garrett W. Hagedorn facility in Hunterdon County, Human Services spokeswoman Ellen Lovejoy said.

"This settlement reflects both parties' dedication to protecting the civil rights of people with mental illness and advances the department's philosophy of community integration," Governor Jon S. Corzine said in a prepared statement.