LOUISVILLE — The U.S. Department of Justice says it has “reasonable cause” to believe the state of Kentucky is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act in Jefferson County.
The findings come as a result of a two-year federal investigation “focused on whether Kentucky subjected adults with serious mental illness to unnecessary segregation at a Louisville psychiatric hospital.”
In a 30-page report released Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) concluded that Kentucky has failed to properly treat Louisville residents with serious mental illnesses in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a law enacted by Congress in 1990 to protect people with disabilities from discrimination.
The report found that Jefferson County relies too heavily on psychiatric hospitalizations, police and incarceration that could be avoided with community-based mental health services, and fails to connect people to appropriate services after they are hospitalized.
Key takeaways from the report include:
In 2022, 16% of people admitted to Louisville's psychiatric hospitals were also sent to prison. 1,100 people were admitted to a psychiatric hospital multiple times in 2022. More than 500 people were admitted three or more times. Thousands more were admitted once.
The report said “many” people in the county have spent more than a month in such hospitals, describing these facilities as “highly restrictive and isolating environments in which people must give up many of the basic freedoms of daily life.”
“Admission to these facilities can be traumatic and can turn the lives of those who experience it upside down. With the right community-based services, many of these admissions could be prevented.”
Louisville expands emergency mental health response services
“Police officers routinely respond to mental health crises in Louisville due to a lack of community-based services,” the report states. “Many of these encounters could have been avoided with community-based services that could have provided alternatives to incarceration in the Louisville Jail.”
In a letter to Gov. Andy Beshear on Tuesday, the Justice Department outlined “unnecessary segregation and serious risks of isolation in psychiatric hospitals” for seriously mentally ill patients in Louisville. It also warned that it could file a lawsuit to force Kentucky into compliance with the ADA if a resolution is not reached.
The Beshear administration did not respond to a request for comment.
“Louisville's seriously mentally ill patients are trapped in an unacceptable cycle of repeated admissions to psychiatric hospitals because they lack access to community-based care,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “We thank the State of Kentucky for its full cooperation in this investigation, including willingness to provide access to personnel, documents, and data.”
“We also recognize that Kentucky has already begun taking significant steps to expand access to a variety of key services, including crisis intervention services, medication management support, and housing and employment supports,” Clark added. “Our goal is to work with Kentucky to ensure that appropriate community-based mental health services are implemented and ADA compliant.”
Marcy Timmerman, president of the Kentucky chapter of the American Mental Health Association, said funding is one of the “biggest barriers” to improving access to the community-based services highlighted in the report.
“Louisville is not alone in not offering all the services available in the state of Kentucky,” she told The Lantern.
Timmerman said Congress needs to put more money into mobile crisis response units that can help people at an upstream stage, before they develop a mental health emergency.
Michael A. Bennett, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, said in a statement that the investigation's findings “go beyond the scope of any violations.”
“These findings are also a recognition of the dignity and potential of all individuals living with mental illness,” he said.
