lities. As a result, advocates in New York City frequently encounter parolees who have been taking powerful psychotropic medications, such as Thorazine, Haldol or Lithium, for years while incarcerated, but who are released to the city shelter system without access to medication and benefits, and thus, no way to continue treatment. Even for those inmates who receive discharge planning, there are crucial gaps in the continuum of care. For prisoners returning to New York City, a wide variety of community resources is available, including supportive housing and intensive social service programs. Unfortunately, OMH discharge planners do not seem to have much success accessing these resources for prisoners nearing release. Discharge planners are handicapped by the great distance between the facility holding the prisoner and the community he will return to. Community mental health service providers are reluctant to accept clients who do not have benefits already in place, and discharge planners at faraway facilities have a difficult time developing the personal relationships with program staff which often help smooth over such obstacles. As a result, for state prisoners who receive discharge planning, the discharge plan is often no different from that of other inmates -- release to one of New York City's Department of Homeless Services shelters. Upon entering the shelter system after incarceration, the mentally ill releasee must spend up to three months being assessed in a general population intake shelter with few or no mental health services. No information is exchanged between the prison system and the shelter system, so if the releasee is not obviously mentally ill and does not volunteer that he is mentally ill, he will not receive mental health services. Often no one is available to assist the person with mental illness in accessing benefits, insurance and treatment. For a person with mental illness recently released from the controlled e...
