DEL.ICIO.USNo funds for mental health advocate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, December 08, 2008
Two nights after Joel Young was assaulted by another patient at the state mental hospital in Atlanta, his father says, Young got a new roommate: his attacker.
Young’s father says that when he first complained about the room assignment, “a nurse laughed at me on the phone.” Philip Young, an author who lives in Alpharetta, says when he complained about the attack itself, “I got nowhere.”
Philip Young
Philip Young of Alpharetta took this photo of his son Joel after he was attacked in June by another patient at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta.
Many families have run into similar roadblocks in trying to deal with problems in care at state mental hospitals. Their only outlet for complaints: the hospitals themselves, or the state agency that runs them. The hospitals receive little outside oversight.
Earlier this year, though, the state Legislature decided to create an independent office of mental health ombudsman to investigate and resolve complaints about state hospitals and community mental health services. But the funding for the mini-agency — $250,000 — appears to have evaporated amid the state’s current budget crunch, leaving relatives of hospital patients still with virtually nowhere to turn.
A spokesman for Gov. Sonny Perdue, Bert Brantley, says the financial picture endangers funding for all new programs. The state’s current shortfall is $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion.
“It’s impossible for the governor to commit to fund anything right now with this shortfall, particularly new funding,” Brantley says. “It’s difficult to fully fund existing programs, not to mention new programs.”
It wouldn’t be the first ombudsman position to disappear from a lack of funding. Eight years ago, the General Assembly established an ombudsman office but never approved a budget for it. The position was never filled. The new ombudsman job was expected to start July 1, but Perdue’s office made no appointment to the post.
Besides investigating complaints, the ombudsman also would collect data on problems and would appoint a medical group to review deaths of people under state care.
The bill followed a series of articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that described widespread abuse and neglect of patients and poor medical care in the seven state-run mental hospitals. At least 136 hospital patients died under suspicious circumstances from 2002 through late 2007, the newspaper reported.
The newspaper articles triggered an investigation of Georgia’s psychiatric hospitals by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is ongoing. Perdue also established a commission to study possible reforms in the mental health system.
The October attack on Joel Young, 28, was not the first he experienced at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta. In June, Young, who has bipolar disorder, was struck by another patient above the eye and required five stitches to close the wound.
Recent inspection reports have found that violence is commonplace at the hospital. In July, federal regulators declared patients there to be in “immediate jeopardy” of physical harm. An inspection found that overcrowding and inadequate staffing caused a sharp increase in incidents resulting in injuries to patients and staff members.
A few other states have ombudsman programs, including Minnesota. There, the office has an annual budget of $1.6 million for a state whose population is about half that of Georgia.
Roberta Opheim, Minnesota’s ombudsman for mental health and developmental disabilities, says her staff members review deaths and serious injuries and field complaints about services.
The ombudsman program saves money by reducing the number of lawsuits, hospitalizations, injuries and preventable deaths, she says.
The potential demise of the Georgia ombudsman has disappointed supporters of the legislation.
“We all knew this was going to be a possibility when revenues went down,” says Rep. Mark Butler (R-Carrollton), a proponent of the bill. “There is definitely a need” for an ombudsman, he says, adding that he would try to preserve the funding.
Ellyn Jeager, of the Georgia chapter of Mental Health America, says she is not surprised by the state’s inaction. The ombudsman job, she says, “is not something [state officials] were excited about. It was kind of forced on them.”
When state officials fail to act on complaints, Georgia patients and their families often see consumer advocacy groups or the media as their last resort.
John Richards, a leader of the National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter in Savannah, says, “these people are calling me and other NAMI officials because they don’t have anyone to go to.”
“The ombudsman is one of our few priority issues,” Richards says. “Give us $250,000 to get this off the ground.”
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