Tragedies that go Danner & Bumpers in the night: our mental health stigma repeats like subway routes
- Josh Jones
- Feb 26, 2022
- 13 min read
Often we see history repeating itself and we miss important learnings. Whether pandemics or wars, we relive nightmares over and over again. Sometimes we see the nightmare coming to get us, and others jump out of the darkness. I see some of that in a few cases of tragedy related to Mental Health issues in New York. The stories stretch from 1984 to 1999 and then 2016 and 2022. Sometimes we can also mistake our future, thinking that mental health is not a fatal issue, that proved gravely incorrect for Deborah Danner in 2016. Wars prove fatal, and our stigma and inability to act against the enemy of mental health is a fatal war that happens over and over in our society.
Here's an article from 2016 which starts to make the point for me, I don’t feel good reading this and we’re not off to a good start:
Deborah Danner was another data point showing we have badly missed the chance to change position on mental health, our blind spot over mental health is the size of the Grand Canyon. We must first be educated in order to understand the numerous mental health diseases and how to support, respond to those who suffer. Deborah Danner is a tragic murder case of an old lady suffering from mental illness that people did not know how to help or respond to an outburst.
Sure there were errors by the officers handling the situation, but the grave error and learning we all missed – the real mistake was the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s neglect of Danner’s serious mental illness which happened many years and many times prior to her death in 2016. A 66-year-old woman who was deeply emotionally disturbed, attacked officers with scissors and then a baseball bat before being shot and killed. And the police had been called to Danner’s house many times prior, she had a history of struggle. When Sargent Hugh Barry, three other officers, two EMTs and Danner’s sister arrived at Danner’s apartment on October 19, 2016, she would not come out of her apartment and lost control, with Barry firing two shots at the woman’s torso, killing her. Barry said he feared for his life, but that is something we will never be able to properly assess, on the surface how can a 66-year-old woman with a bat represent a life-threatening situation for four police officers and an EMT? I think this shows again how difficult the mental health situation is. Officer Barry was later acquitted in 2018, but this is a case that drew a lot of media attention at the time, like many other mental health cases or suicides do, but as many others fizzled out, or the light was turned off before actions and change, this one didn’t do much in terms of lasting impact. It took another death in Rochester in 2020 (Daniel Prude) to launch a pilot program of sending crisis response experts rather than cops to mental health 911 calls. Again, I am thinking isn’t it a team effort, don’t you need to send both a cop(s) and mental health/crisis response experts to ensure we do the right thing? The Danner case came back in the public eye in October 2021 with the long-awaited internal police departmental trial for Sargent Barry to determine if any internal discipline will be taken, five years later (not sure why it took so long when the criminal case ended in early 2018, and the penalty now would most likely amount to a loss of vacation days if Barry is found guilty in the department trial. What does that solve, maybe stressed Barry out more and causes him to make another bad decision?). The city also paid the Danner family $2 million in 2018, I wish that money had gone to education and prevention programs. The payment was likely a result of details in the criminal trial that placed blame on the NYC police department’s lack of training and how to handle such situations.
As part of the trial this quote strikes me, another one:
The Bronx district attorney, Darcel Clark, expressed disappointment with the verdict, adding in a statement that Ms. Danner’s death “illustrates the larger issue of how we need changes in the way we address people with mental health issues.”
About the Danner case, NYC mayor Bill de Blasio said this:
“It’s the classic situation: someone is supposed to take meds and they go off their meds,” de Blasio said at a press conference. “Because of their illness they choose not to take their meds. Once they don’t take their meds it is very hard to get them to engage another kind of treatment.”
Listening to the mayor, one would think that the paradox he outlined has never been addressed before. But New York, like almost every state, has a robust set of laws known generally as assisted outpatient therapy (AOT). Locally, the statute is known as “Kendra’s Law.” It has proven effective at keeping the mentally ill out of hospitals and shelters and promoting compliance with doctor’s orders. Kendra’s Law covers cases where a non-compliant and seriously mentally ill individual has previously been hospitalized, and is judicially and medically judged to pose a danger to himself or others. The law provides for a six-month period of supervision, during which the subject must comply with treatment or face possible commitment to a hospital. This rarely happens.
Kendra’s Law is remarkably successful at helping the seriously mentally ill live relatively stable lives. The statistics are stunning: violent or harmful behaviors decrease by 44 percent; hospitalizations decrease by 77 percent; drug and alcohol abuse decrease by half. Patients report high levels of satisfaction with their participation in AOT, and the costs of care decline substantially, because outpatient treatment is so much cheaper—in financial and human terms—than incarceration or hospitalization.
How many of us even know what Kendra’s Law is? Probably so few of us, similar to the small minority of us who support and donate to mental health causes financially, or recognize the issue and give our support in other ways.
Kendra's Law, effective since November 1999, is a New York State law concerning involuntary outpatient commitment also known as assisted outpatient treatment. It grants judges the authority to issue orders that require people who meet certain criteria to regularly undergo psychiatric treatment. Failure to comply could result in commitment for up to 72 hours. Kendra's Law does not mandate that patients be forced to take medication.
Kendra's Law was originally proposed by members of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Alliance on Mental Illness of New York State, and many local NAMI chapters throughout the state. They were concerned that laws were preventing individuals with serious mental illness from receiving care until after they became "dangerous to self or others". They viewed outpatient commitment as a less expensive, less restrictive and more humane alternative to inpatient commitment.
If the program around Kendra’s Law is so successful, you would think New York would apply it and solve the problem. There is much debate about the Law and how extensive the program should be applied, and much of that comes from the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to address mental health. We don’t want to pay the price for treatment, plain and simple. Oh no, here’s where money blinds us and compromises our decisions time and time again. Mental health is a public-health problem, and we need more emphasis on identifying signs of depression, anxiety and we must not stigmatize mental illness.
Interesting background on Kendra’s law, which came to be through a subway tragedy when a 32-year-old journalist from Buffalo, Kendra Webdale was pushed in front of a train by a mentally ill, schizophrenic man in 1999. The man was Andrew Goldstein, 29 years old from Queens, with a decade-long history of mental illness. He had been hospitalized several times in various psychiatric centers, but his stays as with most, were typically very short. For those with mental illness that don't end up in a prison, the lucky ones who do reach a treatment center, they are routinely released far too quickly and upon release, there is no supervision or continued treatment. They are released back into the wild where they often relapse, their condition reverting back quickly in many cases. Before the Webdale family agreed to supporting the law that would bear their lost daughter's name, they educated themselves on mental health, how refreshing. From this tragedy came the concept of assisted outpatient treatment or AOT, so there is not a premature clean break from support and treatment - a plan and a process for the patient that goes beyond a 1-2 day assessment and thumbs up on the way out into the wild. There is no quick fix here.
Every 5 years when the Law is up for extension there is a cringe in the NY public wallet and debate ensues. But even if the law continues forward for another 5 years, the program is not nearly the size needed to make the difference and treat the population who needs help: https://www.gothamgazette.com/state/11077-expand-kendras-law-mandatory-treatment-mental-illness
And the audacity of our policies to think we need to vote and lobby to continue such a critical program every 5 years. That is nonsensical if we believe the small efforts we make will be able to magically defeat mental health in a 5 year increment when less than a few percent of people suffering from severe disorders are included in such programs.
Currently there are 3,425 people in New York under treatment through this program, compare that with the New York stats provided by NAMI:
‘from 2019, of the 832,509 patients treated in the state mental health system run by the Office of Mental Health, 125,031 were diagnosed with schizophrenia.’
So while we have a good program, we are blind to the fact that less than 0.5% of the needy are being helped. Granted not all with mental illness need to go into such an extensive program, but surely more than 0.5% of those with mental illness need this kind of help. Thousands of people with severe mental illness are going untreated in New York.
Kendra's law has been hotly debated and will continue to be, but this is no simple problem to solve. The law and words from man who murdered Kendra from Sing Sing prison in 2018 show the complexity of the issue. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/nyregion/kendras-law-andrew-goldstein-subway-murder.html
New York state budgeted $24.7 million for Kendra's law in 2017, that does not feel like a significant effort when we are talking about in-patient and continued out-patient treatment requirements. Many are still failed by or ignored by the system.
Going back to the Danner murder case and words from the NY mayor also frame our problems with mental health. His words also directly speak to the effectiveness of Kendra's law when it is applied.
Policy wonk: De Blasio’s Mental-Health Blind Spot
Mayor de Blasio “wasted no time” before publicly blaming the police sergeant involved in this week’s fatal shooting of an emotionally disturbed woman, writes Seth Barron in City Journal. And “it may well be the case” that the cop “made serious errors.” But the “real mistake,” says Barron, “was the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s neglect of Deborah Danner’s serious mental illness.” After all, her case “was known to the city” and she “didn’t take her anti-psychotic medicine as prescribed.” Kendra’s Law has “proven effective at keeping the mentally ill out of hospitals and shelters and promoting compliance with doctor’s orders,” notes Barron. “It’s “a working solution to the problems of people like Deborah Danner, but the mayor refuses to use it.” So “by making the police take up the slack for the city’s failed mental-health policy, de Blasio is being cynical and careless.”
During the course of court-ordered treatment, when compared to the three years prior to participation in the program, AOT recipients experienced far fewer negative outcomes. Specifically, the OMH study found that for those in the AOT program:
74 percent fewer experienced homelessness;
77 percent fewer experienced psychiatric hospitalization;
83 percent fewer experienced arrest; and
87 percent fewer experienced incarceration.
Kendra’s Law also resulted in dramatic reductions in the incidence of harmful behaviors. Comparing the experience of AOT recipients over the first six months of AOT to the same period immediately prior to AOT, the OMH study found:
55 percent fewer recipients engaged in suicide attempts or physical harm to self;
49 percent fewer abused alcohol;
48 percent fewer abused drugs;
47 percent fewer physically harmed others;
46 percent fewer damaged or destroyed property; and
43 percent fewer threatened physical harm to others.
Overall, the average decrease in harmful behavior was 44 percent.
AOT recipients overwhelmingly endorsed the program:
75 percent reported that AOT helped them gain control over their lives;
81 percent said that AOT helped them to get and stay well; and
90 percent said AOT made them more likely to keep appointments and take medication.
Additionally, 87 percent said they were confident in their case manager’s ability to help them – and 88 percent said that they and their case manager agreed on what is important for them to work on. AOT had a positive effect on the therapeutic alliance.
And still, history repeats itself, over and over again:
As of Nov. 5, 2020, the number of people receiving Kendra-mandated outpatient treatment in New York City this year was 1,475 — about even from last year, and down 9 percent from the 1,615 in 2018.
“If more funding were dedicated to Kendra’s Law versus other Thrive programs, there could be more opportunities for intervention,” Gorman said.
But in 2022 we continue to mismanage and struggle with the same history repeating itself in January 2022. One man survived a subway push, but another did not. Michelle Alyssa Go was killed by a 61 year old homeless man with a history of violence and mental health struggles.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) on Sunday morning said that the Big Apple is planning to dispatch mental health professionals to its subway system as a way to prevent crime.
He said the city is going to “flood our system with mental health professionals and law enforcement working as a team to move out the disorder that's clearly in the subway system in our city.”
I feel bad, terribly dark reading about the Danner case, the small size of the Kendra Law relative to the need but feel much worse when read further into the Danner case. Very quickly I see the Danner case mirrors a 1984 shooting of Eleanor Bumpurs, in her Bronx apartment. Eleanor Bumpurs was 67-years-old and wielded a butcher knife at police who were trying to get her out of city housing for nonpayment of rent, shot in the chest by police with a shotgun. The five police officers responding to the call to Ms. Bumpurs, who described her as “violent and uncontrollable”, were members of the Emergency Service Unit, who are specially trained to deal with emotionally disturbed people. History repeating itself, inadequate training and not knowing how to manage the situation. I mean, shoot somebody in the foot and they probably calm down right? Or use another means of force that cannot prove fatal, the police should be better equipped physically and mentally in these situations.
Amazing to me is the direct connection between the Bumpers and Danner cases not from the similar age of the victims, circumstances and outcome, but I’m looking for a drink or a smoke when I comb through a 2012 essay written by Ms. Danner herself where she outlined her struggles with schizophrenia and the Bumpers case. The way she dismissed her situation as not fatal, how she connected to a woman in Eleanor Bumpers and then succumbed to the same fate just a few years later is remarkable and thought-provoking in a dark, dark way.
Danner’s essay connects with me directly and that is another, more personal and frightening takeaway. Ms. Danner’s essay starts prophetically: ‘Any chronic illness is a curse.’ So many who struggle with mental illness feel just this way, there is no escape from the cloud and the curse, we are destined to live with this inescapable fate. Then perhaps more remarkable, Danner states about schizophrenia ‘its only saving grace, if you will, is that as far as I know its not a fatal disease.’ As far as she knew, and how little she knew at the time versus what she would find out in 2018. That is pretty chilling to see and connect the dots on. Danner goes on refer to her sickness as a beast, ‘and the nature of the beast being a complete loss of control – of your emotions, of your intellect, your instincts, your common sense – basically of your sense of yourself, a really frightening aspect of this insidious disease.’ This essay depicts the words of a very intelligent and sane (at the moment) person, she was an IT/MIS professional and proud of her work. And it scares me to death as I identify with so much of what she says in the 6 page essay. I am again scared, when will I be shot or shoot myself six years from now. The beast does feel inescapable again, another dark mirror I don’t want to look into – my own blind spot again reappearing. Or not – not this time as I am not internalizing this, I will talk about it with others as I process, seek the consult of my team. But this is powerful in the most entropic way as I read further:
‘Even the smartest person/people in the world could not function in the realm of normalcy with that monkey on their backs.’
More familiar words and thoughts:
‘emotionally-draining’ ‘self-doubt’ ‘I felt myself isolated and mostly alone’
‘On more than one occasion it was my intention to find a public place to kill myself’
‘several people who should have known better have had a hand in how I entered recovery from this awful disease’ Yes it takes a team to have any chance to win the war.
And similar in theme to another article I am working on, ‘I’ve lost several jobs because of stigma – jobs I was succeeding at.’ Reminds me of the thought in Larry Miller’s mind for 56 years as he didn’t want to expose his secret to anyone, no employer, friend, colleague, no one on earth could know his secret because of the impact to his professional life and reputation it would surely cause. Assumptions that drive you far from potential, take over your every action and emotion, how you project on the outside.
Danner goes on to cut and paste simple definitions into her writing (wow I have done that more than a few times in the blogs and draft book that I am assembling). She chooses the word stigma, and yes I understand why.
Stigma is one of the commanders of the dark army we are fighting against, very powerful, with troops encircling us day and night. Unrelenting the weight from those who ‘are not ill’ yet think and feel ill towards those who are sick, the well see the mental health sufferers as a pariah, because they don’t understand or won’t take the time to try. Even family turn their backs on those who are not ‘whole’ time and time again.
Danner's full essay is here, a remarkable read when you put it in the context of mental health and what happened to her a few years later:
Many years earlier she wrote “Schizophrenia – The Jumbled Journey” with the intent to purge herself of some of the horrors (sounds familiar and a lesson again for me). Unfortunately that story is not published or findable for me at this time.
I hope we can learn and change, fight the stigma and be educated about mental health. But hope is feeling like the losing side of this war at the moment, repeating history. From a pandemic to losing wars that leave death and destruction. Our blind spot covers our perceptions about mental illness, how we react (or don’t react to those with mental illness) and also the programs, resources devoted to mental illness. We have to stock up on supplies to fight this war, when many of us don’t even realize the war is happening every day or who the enemy is.
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