HB1790

I am writing as a family member of a person who has often required the services of the emergency room and IEAs for Mental Health crisis. We are well familiar with the shortage of staff in the long waits for a hospital bed to open up, so there in therapeutic care to begin. This is a very traumatic process and woukd be more traumatic if IEAs are permitted for SUDs.. . I do not support taking the current IEA process and adding SUD cases. The IEA process is for people who are at risk of life and limb to self and others, because of a provable incapacity that make it impossible for the person to make informed choices while ill, The standard is very high on this in order to deprive the person of their rights and liberty.

This will not help our citizenry.

It looks like the financial note is expecting to spend 40 million dollars to build a facility in 2027, after this law would take effect. It’s interesting the state can come up with the money to incarcerate people against their will simply for having a disease that disables them, but when mental health patients needed beds for conditions they did not cause themselves there was no help for them. The answer to the capacity issue cannot be throwing people in a jail which will only cause them more trauma and potentially introduce them to more drug dealers that they can contact when they get out. The people from New Hampshire Hospital testified that part of the bottleneck that causes the ER boarding Crisis is the lack of housing in New Hampshire. I’m not sure if the committee (or the sponsor of this bill) is aware that if someone is disabled and their income is SSI those payments stop when they go to the hospital or jail for more than a month or two. They cannot get those payments restarted while they are in a transitional housing situation. Those payments restart once they are in an independent living situation which they cannot achieve with no income. Being disabled on SSI also means they are unable to work so they can get themselves out of the transitional housing situation. The waitlist for subsidized housing is years long. Making someone homeless is not going to help them with their addiction problems. Letting people have Medicaid so they can access Suboxone or methadone treatment if that’s what they’re looking for would be helpful. Locking them up in jail and introducing them to new drug connections will not be helpful. Back in 2019 my mom was one of those behavioral health patients being held in the emergency room. She was constantly seeking help and she had been in and out of New Hampshire hospital so much that she was eventually put on a conditional discharge. The medication her provider dictated that she take was causing catastrophic side effects like severe anxiety and suicidal ideation. None of these medications seemed to help the delusions, they just made her worse. She had come out of the hospital stable but for some reason her doctor changed her meds, so she realized she needed to go back to the hospital to get back on the correct meds. She was talking about suicide constantly, so taking her to the nearest ER was what we have always been told to do. I assumed this time the admitting process would be easier because of the conditional discharge, but I was wrong. There were no beds available at NHH and she was 12th in line for one by the time Exeter gave up on keeping her because she had been there all week. They gave her a double dose of the medication that was causing the problems she came in for & they sent her home with no follow up from the Community Mental Health Center. She died 4 days later. She died because there was no room at NHH for someone with serious mental health illness who was begging for treatment so it is ridiculous to fill up those spots with people who don’t want to be there whose danger to themselves is that their substance use “significantly interferes with the person’s social or economic function.” That’s a terrifyingly low bar to set to enable anyone to take someone’s freedom and autonomy (and job/housing/kids if applicable). Members of the recovery community testified that forced treatment doesn’t work. People have to be ready and willing. This is not that. And again, where will you put them while a facility is being built? Where will you find healthcare staff? Are you planning to put these people in the secure psychiatric unit in the men’s state prison even though they have not committed a crime? Are we still doing that in freedom loving NH? That $40 million could provide a lot of housing and Medicaid services for people who want stability so they can be more successful in their sobriety journey. Are we really yearning to go back to the days when men would have their wives committed to get an easy divorce? If this passes all a wife has to do is go on down to the court and fill out some paperwork claiming her husband smokes too much weed and plays video games all day rather than going out on a date night with her and it looks like that would be enough to get him dragged out of his home and thrown in the hospital or the SPU. I have known and loved people who have died from drug overdoses, and people who have given themselves psychosis by abusing stimulants to the point that they ruined their lives. I have known moms who were addicted to opioids who achieved sobriety using methadone or suboxone and they’re currently clean and living their best lives years later. Those moms might not have sought treatment if they had to worry that having that on record could get them snatched up and thrown in a locked unit. None of these people would have achieved sobriety that was forced on them when they didn’t want it. Nor would they leave the hospital with a good life after all the new trauma and financial ruin this would leave them in. You would not be setting them up for success, you would be destroying them even more. I didn’t hear anyone mention the potential bill to the patient after they leave the hospital. Insurance wouldn’t cover it all in most situations. How is sticking someone with extreme medical debt after taking their job and their home going to help them stay sober? One of my old friends in California committed her son when he was a young adult because he had mental health issues AND he used substances in an excessive and dangerous way. That experience was so traumatic for him he never forgave her for that. She believes it made his mental health issues worse, and for the rest of her life (at least twenty years later) she ruminated over that regret and she blamed herself for his continued struggles. I can kind of see where this is coming from because I have always held the opinion that someone who overdoses more than once should be treated the same way as someone making suicide attempts because that’s what it is. Maybe one time is an accident but more than once demonstrates that they are a danger to themselves. I also believe that someone who is an alcoholic who gets violent or who repeatedly drives drunk should be treated like a mental health patient who is a danger to themselves and others because they have demonstrated that they are. But you are excluding violent alcoholics? Why? It is because the state profits from selling their drug of choice?? Are you coming for disabled people next? I’m disabled by an energy limiting neuroimmune condition. Am I going to be next because MECFS interferes with my health and substantially interferes with my social and economic functioning? I strongly oppose this EXCEPT in the situation where someone is suiciding by overdosing. But you need to include violent alcoholics who lose the ability to consciously control their ability to drive and to perceive the reality of their inebriation if they continue to get behind the wheel in that state. Those are situations where substance misuse actually makes people a danger to themselves and others. It’s extremely inappropriate and fascist to want to lock people up for smoking weed and playing video games instead of being social.

I oppose because the real issue is providing adequate substance abuse care services not forcing more involuntary admissions for which we have no facilities or staff. Its a waste of money and harmful to the people who need the care.

We need to address the lack of space for people who need longer term care and proper supervision. I do not feel this bill takes that into consideration.

Involuntary commitment is the antithesis of live free or die.

I strongly oppose this bill as it eliminates all funding to support refugees and asylees in the state. Refugees and asylees are legal immigrants. Providing temporary early support is key to their ability to look for work , feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. These supports disappear after a few months . Because refugees and asylees have received initial support, they are able to become independent and productive members of our communities. This bill elects to disqualify the state from participating in welcoming and helping a small number of deserving individuals and families . Refugees have been welcomed in the US for more than 45 years and accepting limited numbers of them represents the values of our nation. This bill is an expression of intolerance for having immigrants in our state and communities.

The research by credible psychiatric scientists shows that such involuntary hospitalizations for people with substance abuse disorders do not help the patient or the public health needs of the community. Francis Hayes, MD ret.

This country was built into a strong nation by immigrants/refugees from other countries. The Statue of Liberty would be a monument of hypocrisy if this bill is passed. The human beings fleeing their homeland to save their lives and the lives of their children should not be overlooked or abandoned.

This would be another form of imprisonment, not rehabilitation. We need more resources for health and adequate Healthcare and mental health programs not more jails by other names.

Tax payer dollars should not be used to force someone into treatment.

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