Proactively make mental health a priority –Joyce Weaver Johnson

Blogged with permission from Joyce’s facebook page. -jsq

Ok, I rarely do this but after reading something on FB earlier, I just have to because I feel SO strongly about it! I have been a social worker for 28 years. Of the 28 years, I have spent almost 15 years in the mental health field. When I started with community mental health services, I was told the patient was the #1 priority and QUALITY of service was most important.

Through the years MH services have been significantly cut with treatment facilities for youth closing, mental health hospitals closing and HMOs refusing to pay for more and more outpatient services. Now the #1 priority is BILLING and treating the paperwork not the patient is most important.

When treatment facilities and hospitals were closed, we were told MH patients should be treated “in the community” regardless of the severity of the MH issue. But guess what?! There are few MH services in the community to take up this challenge. This is most true in rural areas. And there was not training for first responders (law enforcement, fire department, school safety resource officers, school personnel, etc) on adult and children/youth mental health issues.

And we wonder why there are youth going into schools or other places shooting people or adults with mental illness acting erratically; unarmed woman (depressed with psychotic break) shot and killed by police in car at White House or local law enforcement officers shooting and killing a man who threw a brick through a window in a business (he was schizophrenic and paranoid) and then barricaded himself in his house or a man shot and killed by police at his home because he had BBQ fork in one hand and a knife in another and was acting irrationally (took pills, possibly suicidal) and the list goes on…..

We as a state and a nation need to act PROACTIVELY (and stop acting REACTIVELY) and make mental health a PRIORITY to ensure there is early identification and treatment of MH issues, especially in schools. And all first responders receive appropriate training to help them identify and approach individuals with MH issues to resolve issues non-violently.

If you want to get involved to advocate for those individuals who have mental health issues, want to understand mental illness better or find out the difference you can make, go to www.nami.org.

-Joyce Weaver Johnson

As Joyce points out, it’s not just that people got pushed out of mental health institutions. And it’s not as simple as Tara Culp-Ressler worte for ThinkProgress on 30 April 2013, As Mental Health Services Have Disappeared, The Prison Population Has Skyrocketed. Only 10% of the growth in the prison population were formerly in mental institutions; the rest are new prisoners. So now we have neither mental institutions nor prisoners taking care of most people with serious mental problems. Instead, they are out in the community, getting little help. We need to change that.

-jsq