Lost along the way (mental health programs cut)

Lost along the way
Seven Counties Services has cut its mental-health programs, straining the community's limited resources

Six months after Kentucky's largest community mental-health program cut its budget by $4 million, psychiatrists, social workers, judges and others say that patients are being harmed and other agencies are becoming overburdened.

While Seven Counties Services continues to provide for 31,000 mentally ill and mentally retarded people in the Louisville region, it has largely stopped being the safety net for the uninsured.

Because of reduced state funding and frozen Medicaid payments, the agency no longer sees patients with severe mental illness unless they are being released from a hospital or are current clients. It also closed some programs and eliminated 69 jobs.

The effects of these cutbacks are being felt across the Louisville community as the mentally ill have to find new places for treatment, or skip it altogether. "I would venture to say we've got holes in the safety net," said Sheila Schuster, executive director of the Kentucky Mental Health Coalition.

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2003/07/27ky/wir-front-seven0727-18933.html

and the mentally ill and poor are thrown into the streets, just like when Raygun was in..
Here we go again...and this time, Bush and CO want to force jesus down these people's throats via FB funding...
Let the churches take care of the mentally ill//cast out demons, rather then use meds or psychology.
we are Barbaric.

her baby a couple of months ago--how we can expect more and more cases of people running amok who could have been helped with proper medication and counseling--effects of a cutback like this were predicted, resignedly.

As caretaker for a mentally ill person, I say this is heartbreaking. Good medication that restores virtual normalcy to schizophrenics is extremely expensive. Drug companies have "indigent" programs but a person on a lower working-class income probably wouldn't qualify--thus Catch-22: no money, no meds; no meds, no able to do the work (b/c not able to keep a regular schedule, hearing noises/voices, out of touch with the importance of keeping the job, thinking irrationally)--and counseling services are crucial for monitoring and adjusting meds.

I was informed recently that our Texas legislature has passed a new law requiring hospitals, OB/GYN's, birthing centers, etc to give out postpartum depression resource information to new mothers, calling it the Andrea Yates bill.

If memory serves, ANdrea Yates didn't kill her children because her OB didn't refer her; she killed her children after her mental health provider lost his appeals to her insurance company for continued hospitalization and aggressive in-patient treatment and she was sent home mentally ill and delusional.

Our "leg" is barking up the wrong tree, IMO. They need to be fighting for medical parity for mental health, not imposing another paperwork burden upon the "primary" health care for these women. My experience has been that OB's are acutely aware of PPD issues, and many estimate that they discuss the issues with 90-95% of their new moms and make appropriate referrals, it is so prevalent.

BTW, we are losing funding for psych meds for parolees, like that makes any sense. I can only hope they end up urinating and singing songs about 666 in the backyard of our Leg members.

Locally, a MHMR center was shut down in the next county, and our local staff was reduced by 25%. This can only come back to bite us in the butt later.