“I’m Creigh Deeds,” he says after the other legislators introduce themselves. “I represent the 25th District. You know who I am.” Before everything happened, his legislative work revolved around economic development, cleaning up a Superfund site, transportation, electoral law and public safety. He supported changes to the mental-health-care system after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, but it wasn’t until the day before Gus attacked him that Deeds fully grasped how dysfunctional the mental-health system could be. That was the day he obtained an emergency custody order for Gus once again. But at the hospital, the legal time limit to find a psychiatric bed for someone deemed to be in need of commitment — at the time, six hours in Virginia —was reached before a bed could be found, at which point Gus was sent home with his worried father. Then came January, two months after the attack, when Deeds returned to the state legislature, his scars still raw, his eyes red from crying, knowing, he says, that “it would be damn difficult” for legislators to say no to his requests, which they didn’t. Now, because of Deeds, the legal time limit to find a bed is up to 12 hours, and if no bed can be found, the state psychiatric hospital must provide one.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 14:01:12 +0000
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