The state of Alabama failed Rufus Evans III and his family. It failed Tyler Dawayne Lisenby and his family. Alabama's mental health agency failed everyone in the community and it fails people everyday.
Lisenby is dead and Evans' life will never be the same. The lives of their families and friends will be changed forever.
Just months before Evans was arrested for shooting Lisenby to death, Evans' sister filed a mental health petition claiming her brother was mentally ill. A short visit to Southwest Alabama Behavioral Health Care Systems showed he was very calm, coherent and lucid. That visit was used to determine Evans “does not meet criteria for placement at this time”.
I wonder what those who evaluated Evans think of their decision today.
Lack of mental health services not only lets down those families who have loved ones suffering from mental health. The lack of those services let down every citizen in the state who could become a victim of someone suffering from mental health issues.
As I talked to Probate Judge Doug Agerton and Sheriff Heath Jackson, who deal with mental patients on a daily basis, there were two things that kept coming to the surface: money and lack of accountability.
Judge Agerton said Southwest Alabama Mental Health hasn't seen an increase in funding from the Alabama Legislature in about 10 years.
As Jackson said, it's a state problem that's turned into a local problem and it's the local probate judges, sheriff's and hospitals who are left to clean up the mess.
It also appears to me that some mental health evaluators try to blame a patient's mental issues on drug use. They are basically saying those people don't have mental issues, they have drug issues. I wonder if some of the mental issues drove some of these people to use drugs to get the voices out of their heads.
Sheriff's deputies are usually the first ones to respond. But as Jackson said, if the mental patient hasn't committed a crime there is nothing they can do other than tell the family members they need to file a petition with the probate court.
But he also said if that issue occurs on weekends or after 5 p.m. on every other day, Southwest Alabama Mental Health will not evaluate them.
But it gets worse. Let's say they are evaluated and it's determined they do need to be sent to a mental hospital, there may not be a bed available so the sheriff's deputy or sheriff himself has no alternative but to take patient back home and tell the family “good luck”, we'll be back when a bed becomes available.
So, it makes me wonder. Let's say we have somebody in our mental health system feels needs to be placed in a mental hospital but no beds are available. We simply take them home. But if that same person kills somebody a few days later, they don't seem to have a problem finding a bed in an overcrowded county jail.
As Sheriff Jackson said, he is forced to take that person back to the same environment the mental patient came from.
It has the same kind of ring to it I hear about our juvenile justice system. It is kind of the same problem. They pick up a juvenile that needs to be held, but the beds at the juvenile detention center are full. So we simply take that juvenile back to the same environment he came from and hope and pray that he doesn't commit a serious enough crime to get him adjudicated as an adult. My bet is that bed that wasn't available at the juvenile detention center would be available at the county jail if he murdered someone.
Judge Agerton talked about the lack of money and the lack of facilities – especially long term care facilities.
“About the only way you could get into Bryce Hospital for long term care is to kill somebody,” Agerton said.
It seems like we've got some priorities mixed up here. We want to use the bandaid approach and save as much money as we can until the wounds get so serious we are forced to spend a lot more money to clean up the mess left behind.
I've used the comparison before to the old oil filter commercial that basically tells us to spend a little money now to prevent spending a lot down the road replacing the whole engine.
I agree with Judge Agerton and Sheriff Jackson, we are in a mental health crisis and it's only going to get worse if we keep kicking the can down the road.
