Kevin’s Law, named after a Northwestern graduate who was beaten to death in 2000 by a man with untreated schizophrenia, was signed recently into Michigan state law.

The law allows a judge to order outpatient treatment — an alternative to staying in a psychiatric hospital — for people with severe untreated mental illnesses and a history of violence, recent hospitalization or incarceration.

Previously, people whose mental illnesses led them to believe they did not need help could only be committed to a hospital and only after making threats or committing violent acts. The bill was signed by Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm on Dec 29.

NU alumnus Kevin Heisinger, Education ’98, was on his way to orientation at the University of Michigan’s graduate school of social work when he was beaten to death in the bathroom of an Amtrak station in Kalamazoo, Mich.

Heisinger’s attacker, Brian Williams, was a paranoid schizophrenic who at the time was not taking his medication. He was found not guilty on grounds of insanity in June 2001 and committed to a psychiatric hospital, according to the Ann Arbor News.

Williams’ schizophrenia was reportedly controlled by medication that he stopped taking prior to the attack. The week before the attack Williams demonstrated erratic behavior such as flashing a knife and walking around naked, according to the Detroit Free Press. Under Kevin’s Law, Williams’ relatives could have had a judge order Williams to undergo outpatient treatment, legislators said.

Kevin’s Law “closes a serious gap in Michigan’s mental healthcare system,” said Randy Hannan, policy director for Michigan Sen. Virg Bernero, who introduced the bills.

“Too many people with mental illness have ended up in prisons, in and out the revolving door of psych wards, and they’ve fallen into the cracks, sometimes with very tragic results,” Hannan said.

The new law also will relieve prisons of some of the costs of treating inmates’ mental illnesses, Hannan said.

“It’s far more expensive to house someone in prison than to give them treatment for their mental illness to begin with,” he said.

People with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who do not take their medication do not necessarily do it in defiance of a doctor’s orders, said psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, president of the Treatment Advocacy Center. About half of schizophrenic and bipolar people suffer from brain damage that inhibits any awareness of their disease, he said in a press release. The center is a national organization aimed at facilitating treatment of severe mental illness.

Kevin’s Law was introduced in 2001 and passed unanimously in December, but the process took more than three years because legislators felt it was important to balance “the individual’s rights and the very compelling interest that the state has to protect everyone else,” said Hannan of Sen. Bernero’s office.

“Just because someone has a mental illness doesn’t mean they don’t have rights and that they can’t make decisions for themselves,” he added.

Illinois and 40 other states have provisions similar to Kevin’s Law that allow for assisted outpatient treatment. But the success of these measures depends more on the resources available than the legislation itself, said Mark Heyrman, a clinical law professor at the University of Chicago and board member of the Mental Health Association in Illinois.

“The impediment to doing outpatient commitment is not the lack of some law, but the lack of money, resources, staff to do it, or interest in doing it,” he said.

In New York, Kendra’s Law has been credited with drastically reducing arrests, incarceration, homelessness and hospitalization among people placed in assisted outpatient treatment, but this is partially due to a corresponding increase in New York’s mental health budget, Heyrman said. He said most states lack the resources to implement similar measures.

“There’s nothing in that law in New York that can’t be done under the existing mental health code in Illinois,” he said.

Reach Tina Peng at [email protected].

Quick facts:

 Kevin’s Law is named after 1998 Northwestern graduate Kevin Heisinger, who was beaten to death in 2000 by a man with untreated schizophrenia.

 The law allows a judge to order outpatient treatment for people with severe untreated mental illnesses.