In the last budget, mental health was cut significantly. In Alamance County, the budget of a major part of the mental health system, the LME'(Local Management Entity), was cut by 10%. They are expecting another 10% budget cut coming again this fiscal year. Financial times for this entity have become so tight that the LME has decided to proceed with plans to merge with a private mental healthcare organization, Piedmont Behavioral Healthcare, based out of Concord, NC. The current LME organization funds projects like Friendship House, a work-based place for those with mental illness. For those like Alison Fletcher, who suffers with schizophrenia, these cuts and changes directly impact her quality of life. She sites Friendship House as being a major reason for her not having been hospitalized in many years.
According to the article, mental healthcare in NC started a downfall when it changed from a public-private partnership to privatizing in 2001. Services have been harder to find and even harder to fund. Thousands of mental health professionals in NC lost their jobs due to these cuts. Changes have been slowly making things a little easier since the 2001 privatization, but accorking to Deby Dihoff, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Health in NC, things were much better when mental health was a public-private partnership.
Dihoff also states that those incarcerated in NC prisons are being somewhat pushed to the side. There need to be more programs for these people. About 24% of the prison population in NC has some form of mental illness, as opposed to 6% in the general public.
Things may be looking a little better though. Instead of the 10% cut that the state legislature has recommended for mental health, Governor Bev Perdue is only recommending a 1.2% spending cut state-wide.
Now, what do I think? We have to choose. There is so much need ... education, elderly, mental health, poverty ... where do all these things fall on our "to do list?" That is something that I hadn't really considered until recently. My focus, as well as most with small children, has been on education and education funding for quite a while. However, I think we have to think of it like this. What if my child had a mental illness. Could I afford to pay for his/her treatment completely out of pocket? For how many years? Many mental illnesses last forever. We have an obligation to these people to make sure that they have the education, medication and therapy that they need so that, if at all possible, they can become productive, happy people. This is not free and may require some serious looks at how we spend our tax money. Would you be willing to spend .5% of your salary on mental illness funds? For a $40,000 income, that's roughly $200. It doesn't sound like that much in the grand scheme of things, but could make a huge difference in the lives of those affected by mental illness.
The article from which I got this information
Another article which highlights the budget crunch and its affect on mental illness
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