Like many Americans, I was first stunned and then unsettled by the shootings that took place last week in Tucson. Since then, we’ve heard lots of debate about Jared Lee Loughner's motivations. Partisan media hyperbole? Targets on an election map?

Most recently, there has been a chorus of pundits singing about the ills of the mental health system. Michael J. Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said, “The plain truth is that America's mental healthcare system is horribly broken and horribly underfunded. And across the nation, budget cuts continue to eviscerate community mental health programs that reach out to vulnerable individuals and put them on a path to recovery.”

But more surprisingly, have been the statements of key Republicans:

• Republican advisor Mike Murphy said on the Bill Mahar Show on January 14, 2011, "I'd like to see a better linkage between the gun control stuff we have now and the crazy-filter. Because if you look at Virginia Tech and you look at this guy, it is too easy for mentally ill people to get guns; because there’s no mental screening anymore."
  
• Virginia Republican Senate candidate Jamie Radtke (and head of the Richmond Tea Party) told ABC’s Top Line that "instead of it being about the political part, it’s really about needing to get our arms around our health care, the mental health policy here."
  
• Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) said, "What we have to do is intervene earlier in that cycle of violence when they have this kind of disability. . ."
  
• Newly-elected Representative Allen West (R-FL) said, "The shooter was a very disturbed individual and it appears there were so many warning signs that he was going to do something horrible.  We should be focusing on the mental health crisis in our country, not politics."

Well, I have a simple piece of advice: if we want to stop tragedies like this from happening again, we should not repeal health care reform. Two years ago, national legislation passed that (finally) guaranteed that most individuals with insurance will have coverage for assessment and treatment of mental illness. The health care reform legislation builds on that non-discrimination parity legislation and assures that most Americans will have some form of health coverage that includes coverage of mental health conditions.

Earmarked funding for community mental health services will not solve the problem. We need to end fundamental discrimination against people with mental illnesses, and ensure that they have consistent access to the health care services that they need.

The future of institutions as long-term residences for persons with mental illness is certainly an integral part of the discussion about mental health policy. Usually those discussions focus on state budgets and Medicaid reimbursement and compliance with Olmstead. But, I was intrigued with a recent piece on Scott Hensley's blog on npr.org “A Peaceful War on Mental Institutions”—coverage of a different chapter in the history of mental institutions.

I never realized that many conscientious objectors in World War II were assigned to mental institutions in lieu of military service. Their experiences are documented in a recent piece on NPR ("WWII Pacifists Exposed Mental Ward Horrors") and in two books—Acts of Conscience: World War II, Mental Institutions, and Religious Objectors (by Stephen Taylor and published by Syracuse University Press) and The Turning Point: How Men of Conscience Brought About Major Change in the Care of America's Mentally Ill (by Alex Sareyan and published by American Psychiatric Press).

As I read this tale of the evolution of human conditions within our mental institutions, I was first struck by how much had changed. Then my thoughts wandered to the millions of Americans with mental illness in our corrections system. If we had the same undercover reporting of conditions of these citizens, would the photos be far different?

For more information on mental health in the corrections context, check out:

• Three Times as Many People With Serious Mental Illness in Prisons Than in Psychiatric Hospitals
• Consensus Panel Develops Performance Measures for Correctional Mental Health

We are soon to have a number of states release county and state prisoners early—in order to reduce corrections budgets. While I’m all for ending our practice of incarcerating Americans for lack of available metnal health and addiction treatment, I think the current wave of early releases may actually end up costing us more without some planning.
The ‘Exhibit A’ for my conclusion is a recent report in Psychiatric Services on Bazelon Center's Blueprint for Community Reentry.

The piece has some grim statistics—approximately 16% of all prison and jail inmates have a serious mental illness, and more than half have a clinical diagnosis, a treatment history, or symptoms of mental illness. Within 18 months of release, 64% of those with mental illnesses are rearrested—more than twice the rate of those without mental illnesses. Entitlements such as Medicaid and Medicare, veterans benefits, and Social Security income support enable individuals to obtain mental health care, housing, and other services. Without assistance, released inmates often wait months for benefits—a major factor in their high recidivism rate. However, only a third of inmates receive benefits restoration planning that is essential to preventing reincarceration.

August 28, 2009

There is a thought-provoking article that came out in the August 19 edition of the Schizophrenia Bulletin, “Implementing Evidence-Based Practices for People With Schizophrenia,” by Robert E. Drake; Gary R. Bond; and Susan M. Essock. The article is a great summary of the current sad state of the treatment of serious mental illness at the consumer level. Despite significant research on what works, essentially people with serious mental illness are not getting the treatments they need. While the article is a great state-of-the-nation piece, based on our team's work in the public mental health system I think the recommendations need to be expanded.

Over the last decade, a number of systematic efforts to identify evidence-based interventions for individuals with serious mental illnesses have been made. However, although the interventions have been identified, numerous surveys have shown that consumers are not receiving these interventions. The report states:

Epidemiologic data from the National Comorbidity Study in the early 1990s showed that 60% of persons with serious mental illnesses received no treatment in the past year, 25% received clearly inadequate treatment, and only 15% received minimally adequate (far short of evidence-based) treatment.

The 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that only 8.5% of adults who reported both serious psychological distress and a substance use disorder received any treatment for both problems in the past year.

In their article, the authors recommend solutions that fall in the domains of information technology, state policy interventions, and federal policy interventions. But, I think these recommended solutions will have a limited effect if there are no changes to fundamentals in system design and financing, needed to assure that consumers with mental illnesses can get the services they need. I know the naysayers will contend that there is not enough money in the system to pay for these changes. I would counter that these are not behavioral health system issues. Rather they are health care issues—and these changes would be budget-neutral if we factor in the costs of emergency room visits and hospital readmissions alone.

To view my proposed solutions, check out: http://www.openminds.com/circlehome/circle/content_schizoebpstudy.htm