By Sarah Couch and Gay Finlayson
Bernalillo County Local Collaborative
New Mexico ranks last in the nation in per capita spending for people with behavioral health needs ($28.80). We have an opportunity to raise this rank during the current legislative session. Instead, both the governor's and the Legislature's budget proposals actually cut state spending in this area of critical need.
Spending cuts in this area cost us in every other system of the state. It will have a direct impact on your life— immediately. A system that already is inadequate for children who are at risk will become even more depleted and incapable of helping them improve their mental health.
The executive proposal argues that cutting expensive residential services is a good idea, but the proposal makes no alternative services available to fill the gap. In effect, we are abandoning our children to systems that are already overburdened— schools, juvenile justice and foster care.
There are myriad studies that prove prevention works. Prevention would cut cost of care across the lifespan, improve quality of life for people with mental health struggles and their families, and reduce the burden placed on our overtaxed systems. Prevention involves treatment options and access to care. Because we aren't proactive, children founder, then move into the adult mental health care and criminal justice systems.
For adults seeking services— sitting on therapists' waiting lists for months— there are few options. Jail or prison inmates are often released with a limited supply of medication, and rarely qualify for indigent care. Those who live outside Bernalillo County can't get help in the county.
Those with the tenacity and persistence, or family support to figure out how to maneuver through the systems to get on waiting lists, still find it almost impossible to access services. Someone who needs crisis care, such as inpatient hospitalization, is generally turned away. There is no state funding to pay for medication for those not on Medicaid or a private insurance plan.
The current system and its attitude of indifference forces too many into a life of isolation, feeling hopeless and abandoned and in more cases, angry and frustrated.
Legislation proposes to fix this by forcing treatment on people deemed to present an imminent danger to themselves or society. Does this mean that the best way to secure treatment is by threatening the lives of others?
You can't mandate treatment for people society thinks need it when the treatment doesn't exist. Involuntary outpatient commitment or treatment is based on the false premise that society can predict who may become a danger in the future.
Mandating treatment is difficult because treatment should be as individual as the person with mental illness. Medication works for some. Others choose yoga, social interaction, exercise, balanced eating, acupuncture, good sleep patterns, curanderas, chiropractors. These treatments are just as, if not more, effective than the options outlined in the forced outpatient bill, and they don't have the debilitating side effects.
It is arrogant to assume we know what treatment will work or that only certain types of treatment are viable. Our arrogance should come when we become a state that cares for its residents. Guaranteeing our position as last in the nation on spending for behavioral health services by cutting the little that is available makes no sense.
We have to rise up in a grassroots effort to force those who control our money to pay attention. Instead of shooting for the stars or buying trains, let's put funding where we know it will impact the residents of New Mexico. We know what will improve the quality of life, the workforce, poverty, crime.
We have the facts and figures— we have to have the sense and courage to make the right decisions. Leaders and legislators— invest in the best resource New Mexico has— its people.
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