Attack on mental health services a national concern Awareness and concern for declining mental health services is growing. The recent Washington Navy Yard shooting and similar episodes show that while New Yorkers have concerns with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s cuts to care, concern is growing nationally over lack of care and treatment for mental illness. New York should choose to lead, rather than follow, in bringing solutions that historically have helped protect persons with mental illness and the general public. About 170 years ago, asylums were created to keep individuals with mental illness out of jails and prisons. Today, we see fewer asylums, psychiatric hospitals and mental health services. That has had a direct effect on law enforcement and the prison system, as police officers become orderlies and prisons become makeshift psychiatric wards. Some large states, such as California and Texas, have fewer psychiatric hospitals (five and eight, respectively) than New York (24), a point often made by proponents who want to cut New York’s services. But California and Texas also have twice as many individuals with mental illness incarcerated in jails and prisons than New York. Historically, the point of having mental health services and institutions was to prevent this from happening. This trend of cuts and consolidation has, consequently, displaced the mentally ill, leaving many without care and others without a place to go. In New York, Cuomo has introduced a proposal to continue this trend by cutting state Office of Mental Health (OMH) services and reducing the number of mental health institutions in the state from 24 to 15. This will strain law enforcement and correctional services in places like the Onondaga and Oneonta County jails, where much of their expenditures in recent years have gone toward curbing the increase and overflow of admittances to their populations, many of whom have had mental illness. “The easier solution for our officers is to take people with serious mental illness to jail, something we are loathe to do to sick people who need help, not incarceration. But OMH gives us little choice. If OMH has excess inpatient capacity, it should make use of it rather than eliminate it,” said Michael Biasotti, New Windsor Police Department chief and immediate past president of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police. Cuomo’s proposal also creates an unfunded mandate on taxpayers, and will leave some patients without care while others will need to travel further from their homes, families and communities for treatment. Factor in the loss of state jobs and you have a population lacking needed services, and care providers needing jobs. Limiting mental health services will fuel the mental health care crisis that is clear and apparent in the U.S. It will only lead to more public safety concerns and an economic situation that is unsuitable for New York and the nation. — Aaron Williams November 2013 The Work Force 5
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