Fitzsimon File

The legislative committee that keeps tabs on the state's mental health system met Wednesday for the first since the state budget was passed. Committee members heard presentations by state officials that weren't easy to decipher but seemed to portray the last few months as a glass half full, not half empty.

Health and Human Services Secretary Lanier Cansler told lawmakers that the cuts of $350-400 million to  the system that provides services to people with a mental illness, developmental disability, or addiction has forced the department to look carefully at all its operations.

Cansler stopped short of calling that a silver lining, but did say that after the budget cutting is over, the mental health system will be in a much better position to move forward. 

There's little doubt that the system is overdue for a top-to-bottom review and Cansler's plans to streamline operations and increase accountability seem logical enough, but that's not the most pressing priority when people are struggling to find help taking care of their family members with a mental illness or developmental disability and patients leaving hospitals are showing up at homeless shelters because nobody is paying attention to them.

Cansler did acknowledge that the budget cuts are serious and pointed out that the additional five percent reduction by Governor Beverly Perdue after lawmakers left town means Local Management Entities (LMEs) will receive  a total of $55 million less this year to manage services in their communities.

But even then the tone did not seem to reflect the depth of the crisis as Cansler fell back on a frequent talking point, that the emphasis has to shift from providing the services people want to providing the services they need.

That's a message not likely to go over well with people trying to find a way to keep a family member with a disability out of an institution after in-home services are cut or eliminated. They want and need the help and it is a scandal that they may no longer get it.

Wednesday's meeting comes just two weeks after the latest report on how the system is were released, covering the last quarter of the fiscal year that ended June 30.

All but two of the 25 LMEs failed to meet the department's goal of seeing 70 percent of the people who leave alcohol and drug abuse treatment centers within the vital first week of their discharge.  The state average was 32 percent, less than halfway to the goal.

The story is the same for people leaving mental hospitals. Less than half the patients are contacted within seven days of their release and shockingly, one of every four is never seen, though the folks running homeless shelters know where many of them are.

There are some indicators of progress mixed in all the numbers like the decreasing number of readmissions to state hospitals.  But it is clear that the system is still sputtering and has yet to recover from the mismanagement of the past 8 years.

Because of safety concerns, the new Central Regional Mental Hospital in Butner is under a temporary restraining order preventing it from accepting the transfer of patients from Dorothea Dix hospital in Raleigh.

Cansler acknowledges that there is not enough room in the new hospital for all the patients anyway, which makes you wonder what all the planners of the new facility were thinking, building a hospital that was too small before it opened.

That's a microcosm of mental health reform, poorly planned and shoddily executed.

Cansler is a decent guy doing the best he can, but he and other state officials need to realize that a glass half full is nowhere near good enough when it comes to people's lives. 

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.