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EDITORIAL: Mentally ill deserve more than shed of death

Albuquerque Journal (NM) - 4/19/2014

April 19--In New Mexico, when you are discharged from the state's only mental hospital and you have no relative or personal representative, you are "the decision maker" when it comes to determining where you will live and if you will continue to get care.

Even if your file says you're schizophrenic and "incapable of caring for" yourself.

That's how two men ended up turning over $1,100 a month -- likely from their Supplemental Security Income checks -- for the opportunity to live and die in a shed with an illegally plumbed heater and plastic on the windows.

And because their so-called "discharge planning" ended when they hit the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute door on the way out, that's where the state's oversight for their care ended as well.

Words can't express how fundamentally wrong that is.

By all accounts Cochise Bayhan and Alex Montoya were not evil men. They were troubled, afflicted with mental illness and perhaps substance-abuse issues, each institutionalized numerous times.

Bayhan had alienated his family; Montoya's mother had become too old to care for him. And so, when they left NMBHI last fall, they went to one of the wretched shanties that have sprung up in the Las Vegas, N.M., area as desperate locals like Denise and Jose Encinias try to make a buck off even more desperate ex-patients.

Enter the shed.

No running water or toilet. Electricity courtesy of an extension cord from the landlords' home. And that heater with 11 gas code violations that apparently spewed a fatally toxic brew of carbon monoxide that killed the pair in a matter of a few hours.

This is not a matter of patient rights; it's not even a matter of predatory landlord-tenant relationships that sets patients up like sheep, to be fleeced and housed in a barn at best.

It's just a system with way too many things that can -- and will -- go bad.

The Enciniases, a couple down on their luck and routinely trying to stay a step in front of the bill collector, were charged with neglect resulting in death, second-degree felonies. Jose was also charged in connection with the faulty heater -- installing an LP gas appliance without a license and failure to have his work inspected, a misdemeanor.

But the fact Denise Encinias purchased a shed labeled "NOT DESIGNED OR SUITABLE FOR HUMAN OCCUPANCY OR HABITATION" and turned it into a boarding house for mentally ill people, no questions asked until things went horribly wrong, shows the system is, quite literally, fatally flawed.

Shela Silverman is director of the nonprofit Mental Health Association of New Mexico in Las Vegas and knew Montoya well. She says an unregulated cottage industry of boarding houses has sprung up around the hospital, with alleged homes and pseudo-caregivers never checked out by the state beyond getting on the list of who will take discharged patients.

"We do need homes. They (NMBHI) don't have any place to put these people. But you see some of these buildings and they're in terrible condition. ... The state has done nothing. There is no licensing for boarding homes, and that's what we're trying to get."

It's important the state try as well, whether it's through a system similar to how foster homes or halfway houses are certified, or how a parole board ensures someone is living where they should, or through another model created with a mission of ensuring vulnerable people are put in fundamentally safe conditions.

It's far too late for Bayhan and Montoya. But for the more than 80 patients the state mental hospital discharges each year, it's important the state and/or the Legislature extend oversight beyond that front door.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.

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(c)2014 the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.)

Visit the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) at www.abqjournal.com

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