opinion
Maintaining Essential Mental Health Care
D
uring the recent holiday season,
many of us were keeping in our
thoughts the families of the police
officers massacred by Maurice Clemmons
one year ago in Lakewood, and the six peo-
ple killed by Isaac Zamora two years ago in
Skagit County.
These stories often play out in the media
as though they are random, disconnected
crimes. But as professionals working in
community mental healthcare, we can see
how each of these tragedies reflect failures
in the mental health safety net.
Unless our state legislature is able to
reverse course from a recent history of
harmful cutbacks and misdirected priorities
such as tax loopholes for Wall Street banks,
we worry that our public safety will contin-
ue to be compromised —and more prevent-
able tragedies will strike. That’s the mes-
sage of a new report from SEIU Healthcare
1199NW entitled “Don’t Look Away,”
which shows that preventative treatment for
people with serious mental illness is a prior-
ity public safety issue.
G ueSt C olumn
David Black and Zandrea Hardison
appropriate care, severe mental illness often
means exposure to increased risk. People
with untreated mental illness die on average
25 years younger than the general pop-
ulation. They are more likely to suc-
cumb to substance abuse and chronic
homelessness, and more likely to
become victims of street crime. In the
most extreme situations, untreated
mentally ill people can themselves
become violent.
That’s why effective mental health
care is so important, especially these
days when unemployment, foreclo-
sures and other economic challenges are
putting extra pressure on the vulnerable
people who are closest to the breaking
point. Our state’s mental health safety net
includes community-based mental health
treatment facilities and supported housing
facilities staffed by professional cli-
nicians, caseworkers and other care-
givers.
Effective mental health treatment
also saves money by reducing the
pressure on crowded emergency
rooms and jails which are ill-suited
to provide the most effective forms
of care for mentally ill people. The
Downtown Emergency Service
Center (DESC)’s 1811 Eastlake
Housing First program provides a
strong example of cost savings. That pro-
gram provides housing and on-site services
to severely troubled homeless individuals,
including those suffering from mental ill-
ness and alcohol abuse. Before the initial
group of clients moved in, they cost taxpay-
ers an average of $4,066 a month for emer-
gency services, detox and jail. Once they
entered the program, those costs dropped 75
percent, saving the public some $4 million
Unemployment,
foreclosures and other
economic challenges are
putting extra pressure on
the vulnerable people
Effective treatment for mental illness
works — when it is available. When seri-
ously mentally ill people have access to
treatment, they are no more prone to harm-
ing others or themselves, than any member
of the general population. Mental illness
does not need to be linked to violence and
premature death, and it is important not to
stigmatize mentally ill people as a group.
But for people who don’t have access to
in the first year alone.
Despite such cost savings, the human and
public safety benefits of successful pro-
grams like this one can still be too easy to
ignore if policymakers are only looking for
programs to cut. This fall, King County was
prepared to make dramatic cuts to two other
successful programs at DESC — Homeless
lending a hand to the vulnerable and those
most in need. We need to make sure that
legislators’ attention is focused not just on
drawing down the state’s fiscal deficit, but
also on reducing the human deficit —
including more than 200,000 mentally ill
Washingtonians who have no access to
mental health care.
A rigid, cuts-only approach won’t
work — especially since the cuts
being discussed will fall dispropor-
tionately on the people who are
already hurting the most. New rev-
enues should also be on the table,
alongside proposed cuts. Finally, the
legislature must get serious about
ending corporate tax loopholes —
starting with hundreds of millions
worth of sweetheart tax exemptions
for banks, financial services, credit
agencies and other white-collar services.
It really is a simple choice. Maintaining
essential mental health services will save
both lives and money. But a penny wise,
pound foolish all-cuts approach will dam-
age a safety net already badly frayed, and
will open the door to more preventable
tragedies.
A penny wise, pound foolish,
all-cuts approach will
damage a safety net already
badly frayed
Outreach Stabilization Transition and the
Program of Assertive Community
Treatment. However, the county wisely
reversed course after an outcry from care-
givers and community members made sure
that public officials understood that these
programs were effective, cost-efficient and
crucial to our public safety. Cutting such
programs would be penny wise—but pound
foolish.
We need our state legislators to make a
similar realization, as they weigh how to
deal with our state’s daunting budget
deficit. We agree with the governor when
she said last year that the state budget is
more than just numbers and dollars — it’s
an expression of our values. She said that
the budget represents our commitment to
hardison is an rn with the Program of
assertive Community treatment at the
Downtown emergency Service Center in
Seattle. Black is a residential counselor
with Community Psychiatric Clinic in
Seattle. Both are members of Seiu
healthcare 1199nw. the report “Don’t
look away” can be accessed at
http://bit.ly/dontlookawaywa.
January 19, 2011 The Portland and Seattle Skanner page 3