Unmarked Box of Mental Health Puzzle Pieces
Most of us have at least attempted to put the pieces of a puzzle together and would understand the value of having a clear picture on the box of what it is we are putting together. When the state shut down the state-run mental health hospitals (approximately 34,000 beds), local governments, crisis medical systems, and the communities, were pretty much handed a solution box of puzzle pieces with no picture to describe what they were supposed to be putting together. For the ones left holding the bag at the local level, it seemed an insane approach to mental healthcare.
Individuals suffering from mental health issues, their families, law-enforcement, maxed out crisis medical systems and their employees, have all been catching the brunt of a system that was not implemented properly. As far as anything I have seen in researching this, it was not the fault of any local area governments that the state wasn’t running their facilities like they should have, (however, the settlement that was made between the federal government and the state was to switch over to community-based mental health instead of state-run facilities). Even though it doesn’t seem fair that we have to make up for where the state dropped the ball in how they operated state facilities, at some point, it is up to us to quit pointing fingers and figure out how the spokes in the wheel are intended to connect. Fortunately, the state is getting more engaged after experiencing enough blowback from what has been happening in the home areas of many state representatives, and they seem to be trying to do better (after having dropped the ball a second time).
Peach and Crawford Counties are in the process of connecting the dots, to form a better system of resources not only for the individual, but also to lower the cost of mental healthcare burden on our crisis medical systems, law-enforcement, jails, and judicial system, through a collaborative effort, that was started July 2023. The Board of Commissioners in both counties signed “The Stepping Up Resolution” for their counties in May 2024, (Mental Health Awareness Month), as a commitment to pulling all of these pieces together.
As a part of signing the resolution, the stakeholders (that are dealing with mental health) in both counties will be able to receive free training from UGA Carl Vincent Institute this fall. This training and mapping of resources will connect law-enforcement, E911, medical personnel, jail administration, Accountability Court treatment team, judges, pre-trial services etc. to the appropriate resources, such as DBHDD, local area mental health services provider, housing, non-profits etc. and each other.
Doing this training is considered federal best practice and can help an area qualify for grant funding and is an incentive for community stakeholders from all sides to work together and not operate in fragmented silos. From a county budget standpoint, this should not be something that increases the budget, -it should almost immediately start cutting the cost of mental health and start addressing the core issues it is stemming from.
Example: the state provides each community with a mental health services provider, and even if someone doesn’t have insurance, they can still receive the mental health services and the provider can bill the state. This includes jail services, individuals going through the court system and the process of getting them reintegrated back into the community. These providers are the billing mechanism the state has set up within each region to help pay for services that they used to provide at the state-run mental health institutions. There are 22 of these providers in the state of Georgia, and each community should be figuring out how their provider is supposed to operate in the community and make sure that is happening.
If you are interested in connecting with the UGA Carl Vincent Institute to do this training in your county, my email and phone number is below, and I will be happy to give you information for this.
We owe this to our communities to get this right, and if we are not willing to do the work at the local level to implement community mental health the way it should be, eventually, someone we care about (or ourselves) will suffer from a system not set up properly that could’ve been. Mental health issues can affect a broad range of individuals from ones that are suffering from dementia to an adolescent that suddenly discontinues a psychotropic drug and goes completely out of character because of a chemistry storm in the brain. Having a good solid framework in place to help someone regain their footing, helps us all.
