Self-appointed advocates too often prevent the most gravely disabled from accessing care.
I’d like to put a name to why we so badly need to reform our legal approach to treating the severely mentally ill. That name is Rebecca Smith, an elderly homeless woman who lived in lower Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s. Friendly and talkative, she developed relationships with people passing by on their way to work and was well-known in the area. Those in the neighborhood sometimes gave her food or money. She received formal public benefits from New York City for a while but, like many homeless people, struggled to clear the bureaucratic hurdles necessary to maintain that status. Smith’s daughter, having lived with her mother’s schizophrenia since childhood, worked for more than a decade to get her off the streets, to no avail. Smith spent much of her time in a cardboard box.
