New York is expanding its efforts to make sure inmates who receive mental health treatment in prison aren't cut off from such care when they are released.
Discharge planning that included medication, enrollment in Medicaid and initial clinic appointments had only extended to the 3,500 to 4000 inmates with a serious mental illness or who were getting treatment at the time of their release.
A new law that took effect last month expands that to 3,000 more inmates discharged annually who got treatment sometime in the previous three years.
Sponsors of the measure said patients stabilized in prison shouldn't backslide for lack of psychiatric care. They cited the case of a mentally ill ex-inmate who stabbed two children in a Brooklyn elevator last year, killing a 6-year-old, saying that was only nine days after leaving state prison without medications or contact with a service provider.
[For more of this story, written by Michael Virtanen, go to http://www.newsobserver.com/li...article13338098.html]
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