Remembering The Forgotten

Esmin Green sat alone in the emergency room. Suffering from psychosis and severe anxiety, she waited nearly 24 hours for help. But no one came to help her.

After sitting alone in a stiff, cold, waiting room chair for almost a day, Esmin fell from her seat, collapsing face-down on the floor at 5:32 a.m. One hour later, she was dead.

Medical and security staff at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Esmin suffered and died, ignored her. So did the other patients in the emergency room. Though this tragedy took place on June 19, it was largely ignored until a surveillance video surfaced weeks later showing the incident. It shows a lonely, sick woman sitting in a corner, slumping over and then falling to the floor. It then shows staff members, patients and security moving about as if nothing had happened. Finally, it shows a nurse kicking Esmin to wake her, only to find that she was dead.

Some staff members were fired. Investigations began, and reforms were promised. But these promises are difficult to believe because at the time of Esmin's death, Kings County Hospital and its psychiatric center were already facing a legal suit claiming it was "a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger."

The treatment - or rather, lack of treatment - that Esmin received is nothing new. Such an uproar was raised this time only because a disturbing video was found showing it happen. Just one year ago something very similar happened to Edith Rodriguez at Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles. Edith bled to death on the emergency room floor - a death that also was caught on video. She had been seen at the hospital at least six times in the month before her death and had spent 14 hours there the day before. In Miami, Primrose Jackson - a woman with severe mental illness - has lived for years outside her mother's house in a makeshift tent. She is now missing.

These are just a few of the many tragic accounts of people with mental illness who are alone, forgotten and facing death without proper care, respect or dignity. Every day, hundreds of thousands in the United States suffer in the same way that Esmin, Edith and Primrose have suffered. They are the faceless and forgotten Americans. They live on the streets, in shelters, in substandard housing, in jails and prisons. Why do we allow it?

It is time to wake up and learn from these tragic events:

• Thousands of people who desperately need care are not getting it.

• Most of those in need of care do not have insurance to pay for it.

• Our society continues to stigmatize people with mental illness.

• Our country would rather pay for criminal justice costs than mental health treatment.

• Our health system far too often responds to poor, mentally ill people with a lack of compassion and respect.

• People with severe mental illnesses die from cancer, heart or pulmonary disease or suicide 20-25 years earlier than most.

We must make mental health care a priority in the United States by finding the funds needed to provide adequate, compassionate care for everyone. Community-based mental health programs provide the most effective ways to care for people with mental illnesses.