I just read an interesting article by Brandi Grissom first published in The Texas Tribune entitled “Mental Health Cuts Would Strain Local Texas Jails.” This article does an excellent job of calling attention to two of the main problems with cost-cutting plans that target community-based mental health treatment – people suffer while funding cuts cost more money than they save.
Cutting those services would take a devastating human toll, Schwartz said, but it would also come at an enormous financial cost. When people with untreated mental health problems fall into crisis, it is much more expensive to provide care in an emergency room, jail or crisis center.
Betsy Schwartz, president and chief executive of Mental Health America of Greater Houston
We’re facing some tough economic times, and our leaders need to make tough decisions about where to cut, but we need to realize that some cuts cost much more than they save.
formerly worked directly with street people with dual diagnosis and still deal with them as a part of my job. If you look at it strictly from a practical point of view, cuts and centralization don’t make sense, but that is what has happened where I live. When cities spend so many millions on things like new public arenas or parks or libraries in the rich neighborhoods, and leave the homeless to manage on their own, it is no only a moral outrage, it creates many problems. God bless the people who do help them, the ones in the trenches, who get little in compensation monetarily and it is one tough job.
I totally agree with your last line there. Seems like it would do more harm than good.
This may save money in the short run, but in the long run, cutting funding for mental health will only create more costs for all of us.
Just today I commented about this. This could be me if my Dr doesn’t find the right meds for treating my bp and my fmla runs out. Worse off than I am now perhaps homeless.
I have been in the trenches of Mental Illness since the age of five. The stories I could tell would make anyone’s hair stand on end. It has been a journey I would not wish on any person. I now fight for people so they do get a proper screening, a good doctor who knows what they are talking about etc.
I found out in the last year they have cut funding to Mental Health programs yet again. This means in our community more shut in patients will no longer have access to programs that they were attending. I am livid. Concurrent disorders have jumped and rehab is not in grasp for the poor. Statics show 61% of people in jail at this time have a mental disorder. When are people going to accept, Mental Illness is not incurable? Funding is the only solution to saving money in the health care, legal and social services systems. Wake up.