[NYAPRS Enews] Surviving Race Recommendations to the Biden/Harris Transition Team

Thu Jan 7 09:54:04 EST 2021

NYAPRS Note: Surviving Race: The Intersection of Disability, Injustice and Human Rights is a national coalition comprised of Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) who are mental health advocates and survivors, LGBTQIA, and their allies who  have joined together to address systematic discrimination within the mental health and criminal justice systems and to demand our freedom from oppression based on race, gender, religion and from police brutality and coercive and traumatizing mental health treatment practices.
Last week, Surviving Race leaders Celia Brown and Jen Padron sent  the following comments and recommendations to members of the Biden/Harris Transition Team with the support of NYAPRS, NACBHDD and the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery.  See more about SR at https://www.facebook.com/groups/364074427086419/.

SURVIVING RACE: INTERSECTION ON INJUSTICE, DISABILITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Recommendations to the Biden/Harris Transition Team

Celia Brown, Founder survivingrace2014 at gmail.com<mailto:survivingrace2014 at gmail.com>
Jen Padron, Organizer (jennifermpadron at gmail.com<mailto:jennifermpadron at gmail.com>)

in alliance with the
Ron Manderscheid, National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors
Daniel Fisher, National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery
Harvey Rosenthal, New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services

December 30, 2020

Surviving Race: The Intersection of Disability, Injustice and Human Rights is a national coalition comprised of Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) who are mental health advocates and survivors, LGBTQIA, and their allies who  have joined together to address systematic discrimination within the mental health and criminal justice systems and to demand our freedom from oppression based on race, gender, religion and from police brutality and coercive and traumatizing mental health treatment practices.

These issues are especially pressing during this COVID pandemic because BIPOPC are disproportionally confined in institutional settings due to the high levels of unjustified incarceration and avoidable psychiatric hospitalizations.

Through a variety of web based and related strategies[1],  Surviving Race is working with our brothers and sisters in disability and human rights movements to create opportunities to speak truth to power and demand equality, dignity and justice.  We are all survivors of racist systems that foster police brutality and mass incarceration and mental health systems that have denied us the opportunity to engage in wellness and recovery practices of our choice.

Today, BIPOC are more likely to be hospitalized involuntarily, administered higher doses of antipsychotics, administered medications against our will, given more severe diagnoses, and secluded and restrained. [2] We are more likely to be stopped by police, incarcerated, serve longer sentences and placed in solitary confinement than our white counterparts.[3]

We are here to speak out against police brutality and the ever-rising number of people who are murdered by the police, including people with a perceived mental illness. BIPOC must be immediately recognized as a population that is hardest hit by health disparities and racial inequities.  At the same time, our voice must be heard by mental health workers, healthcare workers and other systems, another example of judgement based on implicit bias and racist health practices.

Surviving Race has created campaigns to educate, fight for and re-imagine a world where people with psychiatric histories are safe from police brutality or violence:

  *   The elimination of police killings of Black, Indigenous People of Color must be a top priority for the new Administration!
  *   We support Community Alternatives to calling 911 (Police) and/or 988 (Suicide Line) for immediate Peer based COVID19 CRISIS RESPONSE respite and crisis stabilization centers[4], friends, family members, community or religious organizations, a support line, or trauma informed approaches.[5]
  *   We must eliminate damaging psychiatric profiling practices[6], not justify or expand them. All too often, a person's actual or perceived history of psychiatric diagnosis 'treatment" or institutionalization is used to justify police killings or brutality.

Recommendations for the Biden/Harris Transition team:

  *   Department of Justice: Accountability and Enforcement
     *   We are outraged by the police killings of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Deborah Danner, Daniel Prude and Tamir Race! The Department of Justice should immediately take all steps necessary to ensure that the rising numbers of police officers who kill BIPOC are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
     *   Towards those ends, a National Taskforce should be created consisting of BIPOC, LGBTQIA and families and allies to collect and review incidents where people with psychiatric histories and substance use issues have been killed by police. This taskforce will establish a database of unprovoked police killings of BIPOC with and without psychiatric histories based on information that is collected from data collected from local communities. DOJ's Civil Rights Division should use this information to develop a comprehensive plan to hold police accountable for their actions.
     *   We also strongly support the Biden-Harris administration's plan to work with Congress to pass police reform legislation including a nationwide ban on chokeholds and the end of use of weapons of war by police force.

  *   SAMHSA: Non-Coercive Responses to People in Crisis
     *   The Biden-Harris Administration must ensure that new investments in mental health services should include a significant role for non-coercive interventions that provide alternatives to traditionally oppressive, coercive and/or ineffective mental health policies and service models. While the previous Administration encouraged states to expand involuntary outpatient commitment orders, we strongly object to coercive approaches that threaten our rights and limit our choices. All too often, coercive approaches fail to engage individuals in need and instead drive them away.

Over the past two decades, a new generation of innovative approves are demonstrating significant outcomes in engaging people in need. One example is Project Inset, a peer driven engagement and support program operated by the Mental Health Association of Westchester that has successfully engaged 80% of individuals who previously rejected or were failed by traditional approaches[7]. Another is offered by a Western Massachusetts peer-led agency that offers accessible and geographically diverse walk-in and support centers[8]. SAMHSA had funded guidance states and localities can use to advance an array of similar approaches. [9]

[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/364074427086419/

2 Social Injustice and Mental Health, Shim RS and Vinson SY,Eds. APA Publishing, in press.
3 https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow4/5

4 https://people-usa.org/

5 https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/programs_campaigns/childrens_mental_health/atc-whitepaper-040616.pdf

6 https://time.com/5857438/police-violence-black-disabled/

7 https://www.mhawestchester.org/our-services/treatment-support/intensive-and-sustained-engagement-and-treatment

8https://wildfloweralliance.org/spaces/
9 https://power2u.org/crisis-alternatives/.

________________________________

[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/364074427086419/

[2] Social Injustice and Mental Health, Shim RS and Vinson SY,Eds. APA Publishing, in press.

[3] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow4/5

[4] https://people-usa.org/

[5] https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/programs_campaigns/childrens_mental_health/atc-whitepaper-040616.pdf

[6] https://time.com/5857438/police-violence-black-disabled/

[7] https://www.mhawestchester.org/our-services/treatment-support/intensive-and-sustained-engagement-and-treatment

[8] https://wildfloweralliance.org/spaces/

[9] https://power2u.org/crisis-alternatives/.
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