Judge Leifman, Bob and Suzanne Wright Honored With Pardes Prizes

Judge Steven Leifman likes to relate that when he was first elected as a judge in Miami-Dade County, he had no idea that he was becoming gatekeeper to the largest psychiatric hospital in Florida—the Miami-Dade County jail.

But in the years since his appointment, Leifman has not turned a blind eye to the people who have passed by during his watch—thousands upon thousands of people with mental illness who should be receiving medical treatment. For over two decades, Leifman has been at the forefront of the movement to reduce the number of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system and get them the care they need.

This year, he was recognized for these efforts with the 2018 Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health. The award honors individuals or organizations that have made a profound and lasting contribution to improve the lives of people with mental illness. The award was named in honor of Herbert Pardes, M.D., who was the inaugural recipient. He is the president of the BBRF Scientific Council and a former APA president and NIMH director.

In his lecture at the BBRF symposium in New York last month, Leifman recalled one of his early cases that first opened his eyes to the mismanagement of people with mental illness in the correctional system. He was overseeing a case of a formerly successful person who had undergone a psychotic break and become homeless.

“Being young and idealistic, I assumed we had a good system of care that would help this man,” said Leifman, who is also a member of the APA Foundation’s Board of Directors. But it took weeks of paperwork and psychological evaluations—during which time the man was still being held in jail without adequate medical care—before Leifman was finally able to arrange hospitalization. After all that, he was informed that county judges had no authority to hospitalize patients, and the individual was released back to the streets.

Leifman said that he learned some hard life lessons that day, but he turned that defeat into a push to reform Miami-Dade County’s justice system as best he could. In 2000, he launched a pioneering initiative to steer people with mental illness who pose no threat to public safety into community-based treatment. The initiative also includes training police officers to recognize the signs of mental illness and de-escalate potentially dangerous situations, as well assuring that individuals with mental illness taken into custody have their cases quickly transferred to the appropriate venue so they can be placed in treatment.

Leifman pointed out that since the police training program started, police in Miami-Dade have responded to over 80,000 calls involving people with mental illness but have made only 139 arrests. Among individuals who were diagnosed with a mental illness and convicted of a misdemeanor charge, recidivism dropped from 72 percent to 20 percent. Moreover, the county is now converting an old, dilapidated jail into a modern, state-of-the-art mental health diversion center to support individuals with severe mental illness who too often end up in the justice system or emergency departments.

Also recognized by BBRF were Bob and the late Suzanne Wright, who co-founded Autism Speaks in 2005. They were honored with the 2018 Honorary Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health for their unparalleled autism advocacy efforts.

As Pardes noted, almost no one publicly spoke about autism before the Wrights came along. “They put autism on the map,” he said.

Inspired by their grandson Christian, who was diagnosed with autism, the Wrights guided Autism Speaks from a modest advocacy group into the world’s largest autism science and advocacy organization in a little over a decade. Autism Speaks has raised significant funding to support groundbreaking research, educational initiatives, and family services to improve the lives of people and families affected by autism spectrum disorder.

To demonstrate the significance of the Wrights’ influence, Pardes pointed out that they helped pass the United Nations resolution to create World Autism Awareness Day in 2007. “There are only a few international days for specific disorders—AIDS and diabetes among them—so this is a big deal,” he said.

“Judge Leifman’s innovative approach to reduce the number of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system is a model for communities across the nation, while the Wrights have transformed our understanding and acceptance of people with an autism spectrum disorder,” said Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., president and CEO of the BBRF and editor in chief of Psychiatric News. “The prizewinners are extraordinary humanitarians who have made a lasting impact not only for people with mental illness and their families, but our society as a whole.” ■