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The home for VPR's coverage of health and health industry issues affecting the state of Vermont.

Corrections Department Reaches Settlement On Mental Health Services

The Department of Corrections will provide more mental health care to some of its inmates, under an agreement reached this week with a former prisoner.The nonprofit organization Disability Rights Vermont represented the inmate, who was held in segregation for several months in 2014, even after he was identified as needing psychiatric care.

AJ Ruben, an attorney with Disability Rights Vermont, says the settlement sets new standards for how inmates receive care in prison.

"This agreement will make it so, twice a day, a mental health provider will have to work with an inmate, and try to get him out of his cell. And once a week he'll be seen by someone who can prescribe medication," Ruben says. "So it's a really huge improvement over what our client experienced."

Ruben says his client, who has developmental disabilities, was held in prison for more than two months before he was able to receive adequate mental health care.

The former prisoner has not been identified.

The former prisoner received financial compensation from the settlement, and the state also agreed to step up its mental health services as part of the settlement.

"He wanted to pursue this case to make sure what happened to him wouldn't happen to other people in the future," Ruben says. "He wanted to make sure that people like him, who are pretty sick, wouldn't be subjected to weeks and weeks and weeks of inhumane treatment in a cell with very little mental health treatment."

The Department of Corrections says prisoners that require inpatient psychiatric care will now be identified by adequately-trained professionals, and the Department of Mental Health will be called in to provide services as soon as possible.

If an inmate can't find a bed with the Department of Mental Health, then he or she will be seen twice a day by a mental health clinician, instead of once every other day, as was previously the case.

The Department of Corrections also says it will provide psychiatric care at least once a week.

Ruben says those changes represent an increase in the amount of mental health care inmates have received while under the supervision of the corrections department.

Under terms of the agreement, Disability Rights Vermont will be contacted when a person needing hospital-level care is detained in prison for more than 72 hours after an application for involuntary treatment is filed.

Still, Ruben says the settlement falls short of requiring the Department of Corrections to assure that no prisoners with a disability will be held under segregated conditions due to a lack of organization, capacity or resources, or a combination of all three.

Inmates who require acute psychiatric care should be treated in an adequate facility, Ruben says, and this agreement stops short of assuring that happens.

The state says it will make changes to how prisoners receive mental health care before October of this year.

Howard Weiss-Tisman is Vermont Public’s southern Vermont reporter, but sometimes the story takes him to other parts of the state.
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