At the mental health center
Bill Persinger - Executive Director, Mental Health Center
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
MANY THANKS to the Gazette staff for their hard work in bringing news to the area. It’s a tough job to gather up as many facts as they do, and then put that information out so quickly and so succinctly. Bobbi, Brandy, and the other writers do an awesome job.
I do want to expand on a couple of things about the article last week concerning the mental health center. We operate a number of mental health programs, as well as a substance-abuse evaluation and counseling program. The substance-abuse program employs five and a half licensed counselors and an office manager. Just two years ago, we had two and a half substance abuse counselors. The Center as a whole employs 180 people. The only staffing change we’re going to make in our substance-abuse program is to trim the counseling staff in that particular department back to approximately four and a half counselors. No one will be laid off. We’re going to do some work re-assignments — that is, move one full-time equivalent position from the substance abuse program over to the mental health counseling program. And, we’re going to make some changes in the way we collect certain fees for the substance abuse program.
We’re making a few changes in our substance abuse counseling program because the funding in that area, at the state level, is inadequate, and has been for some time now. We expanded that program to meet needs of those addicted to drugs and alcohol. Our staff has been working very hard to do just that. However, funding doesn’t always increase commensurate with demand. We hoped it would, but it didn’t, in spite of our best efforts. So, we need to reduce our losses in that particular program, and have begun to take steps to do that. A few changes now will help ensure the survival of the substance abuse program. In addition, we are working to try and increase public funding for the treatment of alcohol and drug addiction, given that these addictions are a major public health hazard. On the mental health side of our operation, things are continuing to go well. We now have three full-time psychiatrists, a full-time ARNP, two part-time ARNPs, and another ARNP will join us full-time in a few weeks; all of whom can prescribe psychiatric medications. In the past, our psychiatric prescribing program was understaffed. We have enhanced our other existing mental health services by adding staff, increasing services in branch offices, expanding hours, increasing home and school-based services, and reducing wait times down to a matter of days, or maybe a week or so, in most cases. Sometimes, it might take a few weeks to get help for problems that are not of a crisis nature. Those in crisis get help right away regardless of the time — day or night. The number of people seeking mental health and substance abuse treatment services at our Center continues to increase this year, as it has for the last several years.
The mental health center’s overall budget (again, except for substance-abuse funding) has finally started to improve this year. The mental health managed care program (Medicaid), and continued support from the counties we serve and from the state, have helped stabilize mental health funding. If we can avoid cuts in our various public mental health funding streams, stability should continue.