A $80M plan to address Minnesota's mental health care gaps. Does it have enough support?
Saint Paul Pioneer PressApr 15, 2018
Or you may be taken hundreds of miles to another state where a psychiatric bed is available, making it hard for your family to visit.
When you're released, you may end up homeless because you didn't get the care you needed and few other housing options are available.
"Too often people with serious mental health issues end up in our jails, our hospitals or on the street homeless,"
"Our residents who have a mental health condition are left without support, their conditions deteriorate, and they end up in bad and worsening situations. They lose their jobs, their housing and whatever stability they've achieved."
But a proposal moving quietly through the Legislature would take a step toward closing gaps in mental health facilities.
The bill would provide
Numerous studies have reported huge gaps in
The crisis center proposal "would be a start in closing those gaps," said Sen.
BRICKS AND MORTAR
Senjem's legislative package and a companion House bill sponsored by Rep.
The state funds could be used only for bricks and mortar. Although details remain to be worked out, costs for operating the centers would come from fees for services, private health insurance, Medicaid (called Medical Assistance in
"Each community could design a center and a program that fits their region as best they see fit," Albright said. He envisions mental health, social work and medical professionals working together at the centers with law enforcement personnel, local faith communities and other mental health advocates.
Local entities would apply for grants to the state commissioner of human services, who would evaluate project proposals and set criteria for the grants.
Opened in 2011 by an alliance of
The urgent care facility also houses a detox center and the county's civil commitment court. It's near
When people drop into the center, they enter a "living room" reception area that provides a "safe and welcoming environment," Conducy said. The center's crisis assessment staff typically see visitors first, try to stabilize them and build coping skills with daily, weekly or monthly counseling sessions. Last year, they did about 700 face-to-face assessments.
The staff try to connect clients with services in or near their homes. "Eighty percent of them can get the services they need in the community, not in hospitals," Conducy said.
"We also go into the community with police," she said. Last year,
OTHER COUNTIES WANT IN
Eighty-six of the state's 87 county boards of commissioners have passed resolutions calling on lawmakers to fund the program. AMC executive director
POLITICAL CLOUT
Senjem has big-time
It is co-sponsored by Senate GOP Majority Leader
Albright's companion bill in the House also has broad bipartisan support. At two recent House committee hearings, long parades of advocates and lawmakers testified in favor of the bill, and no one opposed it.
Senjem and Albright both said there's a growing recognition across the state of a need for more facilities to assess, treat and house people with serious mental health issues but who don't need hospitals.
IDENTIFYING THE NEED
Senjem said he started hearing about problems at
About the same time, the senator said, he also was hearing about the need for mental health centers from county commissioners, sheriffs, county attorneys, business leaders, college and school officials and organizations that provide mental health services.
"The main complaint was there was no place to take people who need help," he said.
More emergency room beds aren't the answer, said Dr.
While some more beds are needed, he said, just adding ER slots would be like adding more intensive-care hospital rooms for heart attack patients but doing nothing to prevent smoking, improve diets and exercise or provide more cardiovascular and blood pressure screening.
For mental health care, Sutor said, the state needs more outpatient services that better identify and treat mental illnesses earlier and address addictions that often overlap with mental diseases.
THE BENEFITS OF EARLY INTERVENTION
Early interventions can help "decrease hospitalizations and increase employment, thereby generating benefits to participants and the state," according to a 2016 cost-benefit analysis by the
For instance, every dollar spent on sending a team of mental health professionals to meet and help an individual at a crisis scene saves an estimated
Most of those people were caught in a "revolving door," bouncing from jail or hospital emergency rooms to the streets, Boyle said. "We didn't have a warm hand-off, follow-up care and ways to make sure they got to their appointments or their medical and social needs were met."
He said Arrowhead region officials are ready to apply for state crisis center grants if they become available.
Ten southeast
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Senjem had a personal reason to act. "My mother suffered from mental illness all her life. My dad was bewitched with the demons and committed suicide when I was 12 years old," he said.
"I probably know this subject just about as well as anybody."
Albright, a longtime advocate for mental health care, also has a family connection to the issue. His daughter is a paramedic who "transports these patients 200 or 300 miles day in and day out," he said. "When I asked her why, she said, 'Dad, that's where the bed was available.' "
STILL FACES UPHILL BATTLE
Gov.
When asked if he supports the legislative proposal, his press secretary,
The project still faces a steep climb. Republican legislative leaders have said they plan to approve about
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