EDITORIAL: Report-scrubbing undermines mental health effort

March 07--The recent resignation of the state official tasked with investigating the incident that left a lawmaker wounded and his son dead poses serious questions about Virginia's efforts to address the needs of residents grappling with mental illness.

G. Douglas Bevelacqua spent more than 25 years as an advocate for people with mental disabilities before announcing his resignation Saturday. He had most recently served as director of the Behavioral Health and Developmental Services division in the Office of the State Inspector General.

Bevelacqua's letter, addressed to Gov. Terry McAuliffe, lamented that office leaders used a heavy hand to soften findings in his report on the events leading up to, and after, the violence on Nov. 18 at the Bath County home of state Sen. Creigh Deeds.

The senator was stabbed repeatedly by his adult son, Austin "Gus" Deeds, who then fatally shot himself. The younger Deeds had struggled with mental illness. The day before the attack, he underwent a mental evaluation and was released from emergency custody after officials said they couldn't find space for him at nearby hospitals.

Hospital officials, however, later said they could've accommodated the younger Deeds.

Bevelacqua wrote that his findings were subjected to "revisions that, in my opinion, will diminish the report's usefulness as policymakers consider changes to the commonwealth's emergency services response system. If I were responsible for publishing this report, it would have been issued weeks ago and it would have contained conclusions that were removed because they were considered speculative or too emotional."

One of those conclusions was that state officials failed to heed a 2012 report that recommended improvements for handling people who qualify for temporary detention but can't be held due to scarce resources, a point that Bevelacqua said "most likely would have produced a different outcome on Nov. 18, 2013."

He also noted that "individuals with no background in behavioral health or developmental services, and no first-hand experience with the specific topics, repeatedly changed the content and form of the work produced by the BHDS Division."

Inspector General Michael Morehart told The Pilot's Julian Walker that the Deeds report would be released in the next two weeks. The legislature's regular session is set to conclude Saturday.

The report's delay has been unacceptable and a disservice.

Lawmakers have gone through the entire session without critical findings that could have informed proposals to prevent such a horror from happening to another Virginia family.

Legislators are negotiating an extension of the length of time in which someone can be held in an emergency custody order.

But the inability to fully identify the weaknesses and failures in Virginia's system make it almost impossible to craft more effective and comprehensive solutions or to hold anyone responsible.

With the report's credibility invalidated, lawmakers may never know the breadth of the system's failures or how best to fix it.

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