In a very recent article, “Mississippi budget cuts to close psychiatric beds,” published in the Clarion-Ledger newspaper on may 10, 2016, it is reported that Mississippi will close a number of treatment units and beds in the state’s public mental health and substance abuse facilities.
The article details that this has come about as a result of the state’s legislature deciding to cut funding by some 4.4% or $8.3M imposed by the current governor Phil Bryant’s yardstick, something called”performance- based budgeting process.”
The article goes on to detail a number of state-funded services that will be cut or reduced in size. Such targeted/designated services include inpatient mental health services and residential and community-based substance abuse treatment programs. The reader may follow the link above to read exactly what services will be trimmed or shut down altogether.
This is a rare opportunity for the concerned mental health/substance abuse services policy wonk, observer of both the national and regional scenes in such matters, to monitor what happens in the coming few years in this locale, the state of Mississippi.
Further, it affords almost an experimental laboratory, to watch the consequences unfold. One will be able to see if this has a positive influence on the overall “mental health of the state,” or negative consequences. To reveal this writer’s own bias from having watched many other states do the same since the early 1990’s, it will test the hypothesis that this action likely will repeat the past history of such efforts , namely to cause predictable negative results.
These results in other states have included: 1) increase in the mentally ill populations in local jails; 2) increased waiting lists in ERs around the state of acutely disturbed public psychiatric patients in crisis who need inpatient hospital services; 3) perhaps an increase in public incidents involving the chronically mentally ill of both a minor nuisance variety or major ones of tragic proportions; 4) increase in deaths of the mentally ill through suicide; 5) increase in the deaths of mentally ill persons through extreme public law enforcement actions due to the more disturbed and the communities not having a timely access to treatment; 6) more grieving families and tales in the local media as time goes on of possibly preventable tragedies; 7) increased strain on private treatment facilities ranging from private hospital based psychiatric units to hospital ERs, to the university medical school based psychiatric services.
The reader is invited to watch Mississippi as this made for observation stage in the ongoing struggle with provisioning public mental health services plays out in the media and locales of Mississippi to see how this turns out. I know this observer will watching with keen interest and growing concern and foreboding.
The Mental Health Reform Blog 