Bezelon Center for Mental Health Law
The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is a nonprofit organization devoted to improving the lives of people with mental disabilities through changes in policy and law. Their legal and policy advocates have engaged in impact litigation, policy reform and public education to ensure the rights of people with mental disabilities to participate in all areas of community life including housing, employment, education, public systems, health care, the judiciary and more. Their mission is to protect and advance the rights of adults and children who have mental disabilities.
The Bazelon Center pursues a progressive mental health policy agenda, particularly at the federal level to reform systems and programs to protect the rights of children and adults with mental disabilities to lead lives with dignity in the community. Policy staff promote these goals in federal legislation and regulation, policy analysis and research, and technical assistance to state and local advocates. Attorneys at the Bazelon Center work on issues and cases (see In Court) that push the envelope to guarantee rights, consumer choice, access to services, and autonomy to people with mental disabilities. In doing so, Bazelon Center attorneys provide technical support on legal matters and serve as co-counsel on selected lawsuits with private lawyers, legal services programs, ACLU chapters, and state protection and advocacy systems.
Advocacy
Advocacy
The Bazelon Center works to ensure that national policy is informed by the on the ground knowledge gained from their casework. Thei advocacy agenda reflects the most pressing issues for people with disabilities on Capitol Hill and across the United States. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was one of the biggest expansions of mental health services in the history and we work to defend the coverage and service gains made. The Bazelon Center has also spent decades reforming health systems and expanding access to needed mental health services-proposed cuts or changes to Medicaid are of great concern to the Bazelon Center, as millions of individuals with mental disabilities rely on Medicaid for healthcare and other services.
Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice
The Bazelon Center aims to end incarceration of individuals with mental illness by diverting them away from jails and into community-based programs.
Education
Education
The Bazelon Center work to ensure that every student, whether in preschool, elementary, middle, or high school, or if attending college or university, receive the services and supports needed for success. Developing cases following the Supreme Court’s decision in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1 that focus on advancing positive interpretations of the IDEA, to require schools to provide special education to students with disabilities in regular classrooms in neighborhood schools, so that these students learn and achieve; and to apply the ADA to public school systems, to ensure that public schools provide equal educational opportunities to children with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate – for virtually all children, a regular classroom in a neighborhood school.
Employment
Employment
The Bazelon Center fights employment discrimination and works to ensure that employers provide the accommodations to which people with mental illnesses are guaranteed. For those whose mental illness presents a significant barrier to employment, they also advocate for supported employment.
Mental Health Systems
Mental Health Systems
The Bazelon Center has led efforts for the past 45 years to ensure that people with mental health needs have access to non-coercive community and evidence-based mental health services. As a major player in the mental disability rights movement in the mid-1970s, the Bazelon Center was able to secure a host of landmark court decisions that laid out requirements that are now firmly embedded as standard practice in mental health systems. The Bazelon Center was involved in vital legal precedents, including requirements for:
- A factual basis beyond psychiatric diagnosis for civilly committing an individual to a hospital; (e.g., “danger to self or others”)
- The right to legal representation and due process
- Freedom from coercive or dangerous treatment (e.g., seclusion and restraint or brain surgery)
- Access to meaningful health treatment and physical healthcare; and
- Freedom from unnecessary confinement (i.e., “least-restrictive treatment”).
These hard-won rights spurred deinstitutionalization, whereby hundreds of thousands of individuals who had been consigned to custodial “back” wards of state hospitals were discharged to various community settings (including nursing homes and group homes) that were state-of-the-art at the time. Additionally, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), has provided the Bazelon Center to advocate and build a mental health system that provides the necessary community services.
The Bazelon Center is working to ensure individuals with psychiatric disabilities at all income levels have access to the core set of community mental health services that will enable them to live and work independently in the community. People with mental disabilities should make their own life decisions. They should not be made by government or medical professionals. At the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, we work to protect people’s autonomy, including their right to vote, participate in community life, and make choices about the care they receive
Organisation
Address: 1101 15th St. NW, Suite 1212, Washington, DC 20005 USA
Email: johnh@bazelon.org
