Our elected officials in Washington often struggle to find common ground, but legislators on both sides of the aisle support the idea that it is time to fix our nation’s broken mental health system. The recent gun control debate has put a spotlight on these overlooked and underfunded services, and the exposure reveals holes in our mental health safety net.
As a manifestation of a struggling economy, states have slashed more than $4.3 billion from mental health budgets since 2009. The cuts have closed the doors to many treatment programs nationwide, forced the layoffs of case managers, and reduced availability of outpatient counseling, medications and family support services. Thus, the gaps in mental health services have continued to widen.
As a nation, we need to do a better job of getting people who need services into treatment. Most of those who need mental health treatment never receive it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds less than one-third of adults and only half the children with a diagnosable mental disorder receive mental health services in a given year.
The good news is that when people do get treatment, it works. At the Cobb & Douglas Community Services Boards (CDCSB), we have success stories to prove it.
When Richard (not his real name) came to CDCSB seven months ago, he was, in his own words, “in pretty bad shape. I had a drug addiction and was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. I was not able to walk down the street. I thought people were hiding in trees trying to shoot me.”
Richard was placed in the CDCSB’s Dual Diagnosis Residential Program, which provides housing for individuals with addictions and mental illnesses who need a structured residential setting for recovery. He participated in the agency’s psychiatric rehabilitation program, where he attended various group treatment interventions. He received primary care services and is engaged in wellness activities.
Today, Richard is clean and sober, a battle he has been fighting for 36 years.
Richard’s remarkable turnaround is due, in part, to the CDCSB and other community mental health centers around the country at the forefront of a trend toward health care integration — mental and physical health providers working together to treat patients. The CDCSB is one of approximately 100 centers nationwide in a $174 million grant-funded program by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to improve the physical health of people with mental illnesses and addictions through primary and behavioral health care integration.
Legislators who want to shore up our mental health system can start by restoring the funds whittled away from mental health services.
If politicians looked closely at our mental health system, they would find it is not so much broken as suffering from chronic underfunding — especially here in Georgia, which has the ninth-largest population in the country yet ranks 47th in per-capita mental health funding.
Debbie Strotz is a director of The Circle & Integrated Health Programs at the Cobb & Douglas Community Services Boards.
