Florida mental health system is completely ill-equipped to handle this crisis

For Forgotten Soldier, a march through mental health gauntlet
Miami Herald
BY CARLI TEPROFF-CTEPROFF
10/25/2014

“The Forgotten Soldier is just the beginning of the dementia avalanche that is coming our way,” the public defenders wrote. “The Florida mental health system is completely ill-equipped to handle this crisis.”

They call him the Forgotten Soldier — although actually he served in the Marines.

At 59, his lawyers say, he suffers from dementia and traumatic brain injuries and can barely talk, walk or take care of himself. But for years he became a human shuttlecock, batted to and fro between jail and state hospitals and mental health facilities.

Attorneys in the Broward Public Defender’s Office say the man — whose advocates ask that he not be identified — personifies the way the United States is ill-serving a vulnerable population, the growing ranks of individuals, many of them veterans, coping with early-onset dementia. They say it is particularly shocking that it happened in Broward, a county that prides itself on its progressiveness, and pioneered the nation’s first felony mental health court.

“This is a five-alarm alert to the community that says your mother and father are not safe,” said Howard Finkelstein, Broward’s elected public defender.

Frustrated and discouraged by his plight, Chief Assistant Public Defender Owen McNamee and Assistant Public Defender Douglas Brawley — also the man’s attorney — wrote a letter outlining his trek through the system. It was sent to the Department of Children & Families, to judges and to county commissioners in hopes that more money will be fed into the system to ensure caring treatment of those with similar needs.
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