Here is the executive summary, taken from their full report (Eide & Gorman, 2021):
Executive Summary
Inpatient psychiatric care forms a crucial part of America’s mental health system. Though most mental health services are provided on an outpatient basis, treating some serious mental illnesses requires a hospital setting. Inpatient treatment may be provided in a general hospital unit or a specialized psychiatric hospital. Within the context of Medicaid, specialized psychiatric hospitals are known as “Institutions for Mental Diseases,” or IMDs.
Federal law generally prohibits IMDs from billing Medicaid for care given to adults between the ages of 21 and 64 at a facility with more than 16 beds. This “IMD Exclusion” has been in place, in some fashion, since Medicaid was enacted in 1965. The intent was to prevent states from transferring their mental health costs to the federal government and to encourage investments in community services. The IMD Exclusion achieved its desired effect by contributing heavily to what’s popularly called “deinstitutionalization,” the transformation of public mental health care from an inpatient-oriented to an outpatient-oriented system.
This report argues that the IMD Exclusion has outlived its usefulness and should be repealed. It discourages states from investing in inpatient care, hampering access to a necessary form of treatment for some seriously mentally ill individuals. As a result, these individuals end up repeatedly in the emergency departments of general hospitals, “boarded” for lack of access to available beds, and overrepresented among the homeless and incarcerated populations. More broadly, the exclusion discriminates, through fiscal policy, against the seriously mentally ill.
Concerns that repealing the IMD Exclusion would lead to a mass re-institutionalization of the mentally ill are overblown. The population of public psychiatric hospitals today stands at about 5% of what it was before deinstitutionalization. Individuals in need of mental health care have access to a much greater diversity of programs and public services than existed before the 1960s, when institutional care was often the sole option. Strong legal regulations also now exist that did not exist when Medicaid was first passed—most notably, the “integration mandate” of the Supreme Court’s Olmstead ruling, which requires mentally ill individuals to be provided services in the community when those services are appropriate, are not of objection to patients, and can be reasonably
accommodated.
Interest in repealing the IMD Exclusion has increased recently in response to a concern over bed shortages for the seriously mentally ill and persistent challenges with mental illness-related homelessness and incarceration. There have also been signs of bipartisan interest in a full and clear repeal. Under the Biden administration, mental health-care reform, beginning with the repeal of the IMD Exclusion, may present an opportunity for substantive bipartisan policy reform.
Eide, S., & Gorman, C. D. (2021). (rep.). Medicaid’s IMD Exclusion: The Case for Repeal (pp. 4–10). New York, NY.
Worth reading: Attorneys, and ACMI Board members, Josh Mozell and Holly Gieszl wrote an in-depth piece about Arizona’s mental illness treatment system in this award-winning magazine. They focus on the 55 bed limit for Maricopa County at the Arizona State Hospital (ASH). They discuss the community treatment and the true interpretation of Olmstead. *Begins page 40. #mentalhealth#mentalillness#Arizona
On page 80 is an interview with the infamous Chic Arnold. Well done!
Arizona Attorney – September 2021 – Special Focus on Mental Health Law
ARIZONA ATTORNEY MAGAZINE is the award-winning monthly publication of the State Bar of Arizona – providing a window into Arizona’s legal community with a global viewpoint.
Most folks reading our blog know the long disturbing history of how we have gotten to such a sad place in the US in our treatment of people with serious mental illnesses. You may find it interesting, as I did, to learn that President Reagan made a major change (see below), which resulted in diminished community resources.
“That began to change shortly after Ronald Regan was elected president in 1980. He ended earmarking of federal funds for this system of community mental health centers and instead substituted block grants to the states that they could use at their discretion. Almost all the states acted badly, cutting taxes rather than using the federal funding as before for community mental health.”
We need a federal plan that also involves the removal of the IMD exclusion. This mental health treatment exclusion is a parity violation. There is no such restriction on the length of stay or the number of medical beds in hospitals for medical conditions. Learn more about parity laws.
We need to focus on the people with SMI and not just general mental health!!
ACMI Board
Original article published by StatNews on July 9th by Allen Frances
President Biden’s ambitious infrastructure plan has a glaring omission: It makes no effort to redress the awful reality that the United States has the worst mental health infrastructure of any country in the developed world.
People with mental illness, their families, and society at large are suffering the tragic consequences of four decades of mental health defunding and privatization: 90% of psychiatric beds have been closed; the once-wonderful system of publicly funded community mental health centers has been gutted; crisis response teams are almost nonexistent; and the available pool of affordable housing meets only a fraction of what’s needed.
In the Middle Ages, people with severe mental illness were often chained in prisons, begged on the street, or languished in poor houses. In modern America, 350,000 people with mental illness are in jails or prisons (often for nuisance crimes that could easily have been avoided had treatment been available); 250,000 of them are homeless; and the average life span of those with severe mental illness is 20 years less than that of the general population. The rate of dying from Covid-19 was three time higher among people with schizophrenia than in the general community — the second biggest risk factor after age.
Law enforcement officers, sheriffs, and judges have become the most vocal critics of the brutal criminalization of mental illness and are now among the strongest advocates for improved community treatment and housing. Forcing scared and untrained police officers to be first responders for people with untreated mental illness puts them in untenable positions and is partly responsible for police brutality and shootings. People with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to die during a police encounter than other civilians.
And once in jail, people with mental health issues are difficult to manage, deteriorate further, spend disproportionate time in solitary confinement, and have prolonged stays (especially since they have no place to go and no treatment if released).
How did the U.S. get into this mess? Massive and rapid deinstitutionalization of people with mental health issues began in the late 1950s for several reasons: partly because effective antipsychotics had been discovered; partly as a humanitarian response to the horrors of the overcrowded “snake pit” state psychiatric hospitals; partly as a cost-cutting method (since mental health was often the biggest and most tempting item in state budgets).
The “new approach to mental illness” that President John F. Kennedy called for in a 1963 speech, which resulted in his signing into law the Community Mental Health Centers Act later that year, was a response to the great disruption caused by the rapid closure of the huge state hospitals. Community services were meant to provide a better life for people with mental illness at less cost to the states.
My first job working in a community mental health center in 1973 in New York City was thrilling. Patients who had languished for decades in state hospitals were able to enjoy much more normal lives with the benefits of medication and inclusion in the community. The U.S. became the world leader in community psychiatry and I was proud to be a psychiatrist.
That began to change shortly after Ronald Regan was elected president in 1980. He ended earmarking of federal funds for this system of community mental health centers and instead substituted block grants to the states that they could use at their discretion. Almost all the states acted badly, cutting taxes rather than using the federal funding as before for community mental health.
And the money saved by closing the expensive state psychiatric hospitals rarely followed patients into their communities to provide badly needed treatment and housing. Community mental services either closed or were privatized, and the newly private services routinely refused care to people with severe mental illness because they were usually uninsured and always very expensive to treat.
Eventually, deinstitutionalization turned into reinstitutionalization as prisons replaced hospitals as the biggest line item in state budgets. Under Reagan, the U.S. quickly went from having the best system of community psychiatric care in the world to the worst, and things have further deteriorated ever since.
It is not clear how much of Biden’s extensive physical and human infrastructure rebuilding plan will eventually be enacted into law. But it is crystal clear that rebuilding our country’s shamefully lacking mental health system is not part of the plan.
It is also clear why. Powerful lobbying forces in Washington are fiercely jostling to capture the money allocated to the infrastructure program. Whatever emerges will reflect how much political and economic muscle each industry can exert on the politicians doing the horse trading. In this battle of the titans, people with mental illness are voiceless and their advocacy groups lack political and economic muscle.
The care of people with severe mental illness is necessarily a public responsibility that has been neglected in our primarily for-profit private health care system. The United States has shirked this public responsibility more than any other developed nation on earth. The Biden plan is a sad lost opportunity to play catch-up on desperately needed mental health services and its exclusion of mental health means there is no hope in sight.
Mahatma Gandhi once said that a nation’s greatness is judged by how it treats its weakest members. By this standard, the United States is morally bankrupt and the very opposite of great.
Allen Frances is a psychiatrist, professor and chair emeritus of the Duke University Department of Psychiatry, and was chair of the DSM-IV Task Force from 1987 to 1994.
This study examines how housing and in-home supports affect public spending on individuals with chronic mental illness in Maricopa County, Arizona.
It does so through a comparative analysis of average costs per person per year across three housing settings: permanent supportive housing, housing with unknown in-home support, and chronic homelessness.
Specifically, it analyzes costs for housing, health care, and criminal justice during the period of 2014-2019. It also features a small-sample (small-N) case study of a housing setting that provides individualized, 24/7 in-home support to individuals with chronic mental illness (CMI) who have high support needs, examining average costs per person before and after moving into that setting (2016-2019).
Finally, the study outlines recommendations from interviews with dozens of experts who work with and care for individuals with CMI in Maricopa County about reducing costs and improving care.
Obviously frustrated with how long Arizona’s legislature was taking to pass a proposed State budget for 2022, Governor Ducey last week vetoed 22 bills that the legislature had passed and was sitting on his desk awaiting signature. In explaining his veto, the Governor remarked that the proposed bills “could wait” and that the budget was most important.
Unfortunately, the Governor’s veto means that these 22 bills are “dead” unless the legislature passes the bills a second time (which requires some changes in the legislative rules), and the governor then signs each bill. There is no guarantee that each of the 22 bills will make it back to the Governor’s desk.
Among the 22 vetoed bills were two bills that protect public health and safety bills. The first bill, SB1030, protects the public by strengthening the Psychiatric Review Security Board. The second bill, SB1716, lays the groundwork for how the Arizona State Hospital (ASH) can provide better care for patients and protect our communities in the future. These important bills were two years in the making; each passed the Senate and House unanimously! Sadly, the Governor’s veto came within weeks of a murder in a Gilbert “group home”… allegedly by a former patient at ASH whom the PSRB approved to live in the community just months ago.
The 2022 Budget obviously is critically important to our state, and it is the Legislature’s job to produce that budget. We all should advocate for our legislature to immediately pass a budget upon return on June 10. However, we also need the new laws that our elected representatives passed. Mental health and public safety are not simply “stuff” that can wait.
Be prepared to advocate for the Legislature to pass (again) SB1030 and SB1716 and, then to contact the Governor’s Office to ask the Governor to sign both bills. No further delays, please.
We have an underclass in Arizona – our chronically mentally ill, most of whom suffer from schizophrenia. Society treats this sliver of people with serious mental illness just as cruelly and inhumanely as the lepers of antiquity or the untouchables of India. Many of these persons have no shelter, no bed, no toilet, no shower or bathtub, no running water, no electricity, and no reliable access to food, clean water, or medical care unless they are in jail.
Our public mental health care system is organized for and provides exemplary care for the 90% of Seriously Mentally Ill (“SMI”) persons who have insight into their illness and are mostly compliant with treatment. But, some SMI persons are chronic, i.e., they are so ill they believe the voices in their heads and their delusions are real, they suffer anosognosia (inability to recognize one’s clinically evident mental illness). They are mostly non-compliant with treatment. So, they recycle, repeatedly, through treatment programs, emergency rooms, hospitals, the streets, and jails in a hellish existence. Their physical and mental health deteriorates as their families abandon them or become exhausted, struggling to get care for them, and are blocked at every turn.
This underclass results from myths about mental illness, which permeate much of our public mental health care system and block chronically mentally persons from desperately needed care. As the father of a chronically mentally ill adult, I personally have been told each of the comments paraphrased in quotes below:
Recovery myth: “All persons with SMI can recover and lead a normal life.” In reality, chronic mental illness is more like diabetes and can be managed but rarely, if ever, cured.
Compliance myth: “All persons with SMI can ‘recover’ by complying with treatment in short-term residential programs, community living programs or independent living with ‘wrap-around’ services, combined, as needed, with assertive community treatment (‘ACT’) and occasional involuntary treatment (i.e., injections and short-term hospitalizations), regardless of the severity of their illness.” “He fails to recover because he chooses not to comply with our treatment protocols and rules, so he cannot continue in our treatment program.” The most severely ill are denied treatment because of the severity of their illness.
Acuity myth: “SMI does not impair her ability to make good decisions and is no excuse for her inappropriate behavior.” In reality, schizophrenia is a physiological impairment of the brain which does affect judgment and behavior.
Fairness myth: “All adults with SMI should be allowed to make their own medical decisions, to refuse treatment, to choose homelessness and never should be subjected to long-term involuntary care, regardless of the severity of their illness.” “Removing such liberty is unfair discrimination against the mentally ill.”
Substance use myth: “It’s just illicit drugs.” ”We cannot treat his mental illness until he overcomes his substance use problem.” In reality, 75% of SMI persons who are chronically afflicted self-medicate with illicit substances for temporary relief from painful symptoms at some point in their life, which exacerbates their illness.
These myths coalesce into an unconscious, sometimes deliberate, and often-denied culture of blocking chronically-afflicted persons from care because “he won’t comply”; “he uses drugs”; or, “he’s an adult and makes his own choices.” In reality, she thinks the voices and delusions are real, and hence she cannot participate consistently in the treatment offered to the other 90% of SMI persons who have insight. She needs a caring system free of these myths, more flexible, more attuned to her individual needs, and more accountable to the public. And, she might even need long-term involuntary treatment, opponents of which sincerely believe and use these myths to block expansion of such treatment, unwittingly keeping this underclass in our streets and jails.
Dick Dunseath, father of a chronically mentally ill adult son / Carefree, Arizona
The recent murder of one mentally ill patient by another mentally patient in a Gilbert, Arizona Behavioral Health Residential Facility brings into sharp focus the importance of careful placement and diligent supervision of individuals living with chronic mental illness. Of course, the complete facts surrounding the tragic death of 49-year-old Steven Howells, apparently at the hands of Christopher Lambeth, are not yet known. What is known is that Lambeth “stepped down” to a facility with only hours of staffing daily, and the alleged murder occurred when no staff was present.
A critical unknown known fact is whether Lambeth was medication and treatment adherent. Also, whether his behaviors began deteriorating in the prior days or weeks without an intervention by his treatment team or whether this deterioration (if any happened) was even noticed by staff during the mere 8-hours daily they were present in the home (assuming staff was, indeed, present). The critical known fact is that Arizona’s Psychiatric Security Board did not hear from a psychiatrist or psychologist and acted without a Risk Assessment, a formal report on the risk of violence by someone in a new environment, for example, a residence with minimal staffing.
Thankfully, Senator Nancy Barto is trying to make the community safer for all patients with her PSRB reform bill.
The profound tragedy of the Tilda Manor murder is that it is two-fold:
One patient is dead, and the accused patient faces horrific criminal charges.
The behavioral health system failed each of these men.
SB1030 — The PSRB Bill. With agreed-upon floor amendments, this bill will not have a budget impact. It reforms the Psychiatric Security Review Board and will have a significant impact on Public Safety. You can read more about this important work in a recent Op-Ed published in the Arizona Capitol Times.
Please take a moment to email or call your State Representatives and senators and ask them to support this bill! Every email or phone call matters and makes a huge difference!! Thank You!
Here is a link to find your AZ Representative’s and Senator’s email. You can also quickly email all House and Senate members through this site:
Sen. Nancy Barto is spearheading an effort to abolish the state board that decides whether those who commit serious crimes but were found guilty except insane are fit to return to the community.
The effort gained urgency after a man allegedly beat another resident of his Gilbert group home to death last month – 15 years after he killed his own grandparents and less than a year after the Arizona Psychiatric Security Review Board decided after a brief hearing that he needed less supervision.
Legislative efforts to reform the board fell short last year, but have picked up steam this session. SB1029 looks to reform the board, and SB1030 would sunset it and move the board’s duties back to the courts in 2023.
Barto, R-Phoenix, said the two bills – which are waiting for a floor vote in the House – are being rolled into one. SB1030 will have the reforms outlined in SB1029 while still dissolving the board in a couple years.
Barto said she’d been hearing concerns about the board for years. When she attended a board meeting to see for herself how it operated, she described it as “haphazard” and unusual.
“It’s hard to overestimate how lack of rules, really has potentially and actually harmed the public in this instance; we need to rectify it,” she said.
Christopher Lambeth, 37, last appeared in front of the board in August 2020. Previously committed to the Arizona State Hospital after being found guilty except insane in his grandparents’ murder, Lambeth had been living in a transitional facility in Tucson. At the August hearing, which lasted 20 minutes, his request to move to the Phoenix area was unanimously approved and he was placed in a home with only eight hours of supervision a day.
Advocates say the subsequent tragedy was preventable, but predictable, and that it speaks to a litany of problems with the board and how it’s run. They say the board handles cases inconsistently, provides inadequate time for clients and attorneys to prepare for hearings and has insufficient written guidelines and procedures.
Holly Gieszl, a founding member of the Association for the Chronically Mentally Ill, said Lambeth’s case was a prime example of the board’s dysfunction. Gieszl often attends board meetings to represent her own clients, and she remembers Lambeth’s August hearing setting off alarm bells at the time.
“Chris comes in, they don’t have a risk assessment; they don’t hear from a physician or psychologist, and they let him go to an eight-hour house,” Gieszl said. “Seven months later, he murdered someone.”
Board members are appointed by the governor. The board is headed by a retired psychiatrist and has a psychiatrist, psychologist, parole officer and a public member. The board is responsible for deciding whether those who committed serious crimes but were found guilty except insane are fit to be discharged from the state hospital. It is also tasked with monitoring the progress of those on conditional release from the hospital. The board deals with roughly 100 cases a year.
Some of the issues flagged by Gieszl and others were also noted in a 2018 auditor general report. The report stated that the board needed to develop rules and policies to guide its work, issue orders and notices as statutorily required and make sure it was getting consistent information on the patients’ mental health before making decisions.
It alsostated that some mental health reportswere much more detailed than others, with some offering only “general conclusion statements with little or no support.”
“The lack of sufficient information jeopardizes the Board’s ability to make timely and consistent decisions regarding GEI (guilty except insane) persons,” the report stated.
While board chairman Dr. James Clark has said that the board completed the recommendations outlined by the audit, advocates disagree and also want more changes.
“What the PSRB has not changed at all is the way that it has gone about assessing risk before it releases somebody,” Gieszl said, adding that her organization is backing the legislation to address those inadequacies.
Among the changes proposed in the legislation are placing a retired judge as the chair of the board, giving a 45-day notice to patients before hearings and having the board explain its decisions on each patient. After the board sunsets in 2023, the cases would be transferred to the Superior Court where the person was sentenced as guilty except insane.
Barto said that in stakeholder meetings, board members were resistant to any sort of change.
“I think they just really think that the status quo is working,” Barto said. “When you look at what just happened, unfortunately, we’ve known this is coming, something like the tragedy that happened with Mr. Lambeth and who he killed. It’s unfortunate that we have such a prime example of the board’s inability to make a better determination of this man’s future.”
Clark declined an interview, instead referring to his presentations to the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Criminal Justice Reform Committee. He declined to comment on whether the board handled Lambeth’s case appropriately.
“(D)oing away with the PSRB and having Superior Courts assume jurisdiction and monitoring/oversight/supervision of individuals adjudicated Guilty Except Insane, as SB1030 proposes, would be a major policy change, a step backwards and would add an extra burden on the Superior Courts that is unnecessary,” Clark said in his written statement.
As Tim Murphy points out, while most people with serious mental illness are not violent (but, instead, are more likely to be victimized), there is an association between violence and serious mental illness. People with untreated or undertreated psychosis can be dangerous. Families and friends need to understand the risk. Risk assessments, appropriately done by experts, would help recognize and mitigate potential bad outcomes to societies when people with SMI are re-introduced to communal living. More attention needs to focus on serious mental illness, the causes, the treatment, and optimal disease management. Serious mental illness should be managed in the same manner as cardiovascular disease or diabetes, understanding that this is likely a lifelong condition that waxes and wanes in severity and must be managed continually. We need to recognize mental illness as a disease and not a character flaw.
Charles Goldstein, M.D.
Serious Mental Illnesses Are More Deadly Than Covid, Tim Murphy Argues. So Why Aren’t We Doing More?
(5-14-21) Former Rep. Tim Murphy (R.-Pa.) wrote and pushed the most significant federal mental health legislation in decades through Congress during the final days of the Obama Administration. In this OP Ed first published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, he argues that serious mental illnesses are claiming more lives than COVID and calls for reforms, many of which, were stripped from his original bill. As with all guest blogs, the views expressed are the author’s. I welcome comments on my Facebook page.
Addressing the link between violence, serious mental illness
Mass murders have already exceeded several dozen in 2021. The act is so abhorrent to us that we continually seek explanations in hope of finding a cause and cure.
Some blame the weapon (primarily firearms) and some the characteristics of the perpetrator such as the presence of serious mental illness (SMI), including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Global studies of mass violence report that perpetrator SMI is present in less than 10% of the cases, leading some advocates to suggest preventive efforts be directed away from mental illness.
Nearly 30% of family homicides involve someone with a SMI
SMI is present in about 10% of all law enforcement responses and 20% of the prison population (where most do not receive proper treatment and are twice as likely to be victims of inmate violence). Those with SMI are 11 times more likely to be the victims of crime, are almost half of the victims in fatal police encounters, and the untreated SMI are 16 times more likely to die in a police encounter.
Perpetrator SMI is reported in 29% of family homicides and 20% of law enforcement officer fatalities. Half of those with SMI attempt suicide, and 75% have at least one chronic illness such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes contributing to their 10–15-year shorter lifespan.
Dr. Tom Insel, former head of the National Institute of Mental Health, estimated SMI has an annual death toll of a few hundred thousand lives in the U.S. and 8 million lives globally. By comparison, 3.2 million total deaths worldwide have been attributed to COVID-19 to date. Yet, for COVID, we shut down the planet.
SMI Kills More Than COVID – Why Are We Failing?
So where and why are we failing people living with SMI? Simply put, we still make it very difficult to get proper care.
Many with SMI do not seek care because of a common symptom called “anosognosia,” whereby the illness itself causes the person to be unable to understand they have an illness, and therefore will not voluntarily seek help. They are unable to recognize their hallucinations and delusions are not real, and like other deteriorating brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, they are even unaware they are unaware they are ill.
As with dementia they can become paranoid, distrustful, combative and resist treatment. However, unlike SMI, coordinated treatment and care is widely available for dementia. Tragically, federal and state policies create insurmountable barriers to care for the SMI, even for those who voluntarily seek treatment.
Key Provisions Of His Bill Were Dropped
When Congress passed my Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act in 2016, several major reforms were created to better treat mental illness. However, key provisions were left out, mostly for budgetary reasons. Passage of them now would provide major tools for prevention of more tragedies.
• Increase Psychiatric Bed Capacity. There are 10 times more people with SMI in jails than in psychiatric hospitals. An antiquated regulation known as the Institute for Mental Diseases (IMD) Exclusion was designed to close overcrowded psychiatric hospitals like Mayview and Dixmont by barring federal Medicaid funds in psychiatric facilities with more than 16 beds. In 2016, a new federal IMD rule loosened restrictions but still limits psychiatric inpatient hospital care to 15 days per month. This is a ludicrous policy and anti-science since it is based on budgetary and not medical standards of care. Just medication stabilization alone often requires more time.
• More providers. Early symptoms of SMI appear by age 14 in half the cases and in three-fourths by age 24. Early treatment makes a huge difference in prognosis. However, most counties have no child/adolescent psychiatrists, psychiatrists, psychologists or psychiatric nurse practitioners and even among those who do, most do not specialize in treating SMI. Low insurance reimbursement rates and high provider burnout causes many to leave these careers early. Medical and graduate school scholarships and loan forgiveness should be granted to any doctoral level psychiatric provider specializing in the care of SMI.
• Stop treating SMI as a crime. Many state courts order treatment or allow access to state-funded care only if the person commits a crime. A better alternative is Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) based on a standard that recognizes “psychiatric deterioration” before “dangerousness to self/others” or “grave disability” as criteria for those who need treatment.
In AOT, a court orders a person to remain in outpatient treatment with medication, social services and supportive housing. AOT reduces crime, arrests, homelessness, incarceration and improves adherence to treatment often by over 70%. Fund and promote AOT.
• Train police. Crisis intervention training is effective to de-escalate a potentially volatile situation, saving the lives of citizens and police. Require it. Fund it.
• Let families help. Current confidentiality laws are supposed to serve the patient’s best interest; however, they create barriers when doctors are blocked from important communication with families regarding history of treatment, medication, violence and ability for self-care. Informed decisions about treatment should permit compassionate communication between providers and families under defined circumstances. Reform the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy rule.
• Increase SMI research. NIMH decreased research on bipolar disorder by 25% and on schizophrenia by 17.5% between 2016 and 2019 and cut research trials for medication by 90% between 2003 and 2019.
• It costs less to care. A report to be released in a few weeks from Schizophrenia and Psychosis Action Alliance (on which I serve as a board member) will detail that the total costs of our misguided approach to schizophrenia and bipolar disease in the U.S. is several hundred billion dollars per year. The annual per person costs for schizophrenia alone exceed $100,000 per year. Treatment is one-sixth the cost of incarceration, and greatly reduces the risk for violence.
There is plenty of research indicating effective treatment can greatly reduce the risk for violence among those with SMI. Common decency, compassion and economics all underscore the value of changing our approach. We risk repeating the same tragic course if we again fail to act properly. And if we fail, the fault lies not in our guns, but in ourselves. Now that is a mass tragedy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tim Murphy is a psychologist and a former Pennsylvania state senator and U.S. congressman from Western Pennsylvania. He works as a psychologist in the Pittsburgh area, especially with veterans struggling with PTSD.
Please join us to learn about the “Mapping the Costs of Serious Mental Illness” which was a two-year study commissioned by ACMI to determine various costs associated with serious mental illness. There will be a presentation followed by a Q & A session.
The following bills that seek to enhance the well-being of individuals and families with chronic mental illness in Arizona continue to move forward. Here’s where they stand and how you can help:
SB1059 – Clarifies current law requires that a person with mental illness and substance use diagnosis must be evaluated and not summarily dismissed due to the presence of drugs. The intention is to make treatment consistent.
Status: Passed in the Senate. Passed out of House Committees, currently waiting to go to House floor for a vote. Email all House members.
SB1142 – A tax incentive bill for employers who hire people with serious mental illness. Sets the credit amount at $2 for each hour worked by an SMI employee during the calendar year, not to exceed $20,000, tax-paying business owner. Government agencies excluded.
Status: Passed in the Senate. To be heard in the House Appropriations Committee this Tuesday, 3/30, for a vote.
SB1716 – Currently, only 55 patients from Maricopa County can be at the Arizona State Hospital (ASH) — even when there are empty beds. ASH will no longer limit the number of patients who can be admitted based on the county where the patient lives. Admission should be based on clinical needs.
Reforms the existing ASH Governing Body (Governing Body) to operate without conflicts of interest: Most members will NO LONGER be employees of the Department of Health Services, which oversees ASH. Requires that the Chair of the Independent Oversight Committee (IOC) be invited to Board meetings and provided quarterly reports about human rights violations with patients. Improves transparency — requires Governing Body file annual reports with the Legislature that describe the treatment provides and what is working.
Patient safety improvement: ASH has an outmoded video surveillance system that puts patient safety at risk. We need a better surveillance system. The bill requires ASH to maintain a surveillance system with video and audio and appropriates $500,000 to do so. ASH administration has requested a new system last year and is currently in a Request for Proposal.
Status: Passed in the Senate. To be heard in the House Appropriations Committee this Tuesday, 3/30, for a vote.
SB1029 & SB1030 – Psychiatric security review board (PSRB) bill, SB1029, requires more information and reports for the Board to ensure that it treats patients fairly and protects the public. The Board now operates without enough information on patients when it makes decisions. The bill has a retired judge become the Chair, so the Board operates by fair rules.
Because the PSRB Board opposes any changes and claims that it operates perfectly, SB1030 ends the PSRB and sends the functions that the PSRB performs to the Superior Court in each county. This saves the state money and will ensure that patients get a fair hearing in front of a judge who follows the law.
Status: Passed in the Senate. Passed in the House Committees, waiting to go to the House floor for a vote.
SCR1018 – A Concurrent Resolution expresses support for community-based efforts to provide clinically appropriate care to individuals with chronic serious mental illness.
Status: Passed in the Senate. Passed in the House Committees, waiting to go to the House floor for a vote.
ACMI would like to thank Senator Nancy Barto, the sponsor of these bills, for her tireless and heroic work on behalf of individuals and families living with chronic mental illness in Arizona! When you have an opportunity, please thank her as well.
We realize that everyone’s life is full; if you are unable to call or email but still want to help the chronically mentally ill, you can partner with us financially. ACMI is a group of dedicated volunteers; no one receives a salary. Your gift will go directly toward improving the well-being of people living with chronic mental illness.
Please contact your legislators by this Monday morning.
Arizona State University Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions and its Morrison Institute for Public Policy proposes a new approach to describing the costs associated with chronic mental illness. Rather than a top-down analysis that estimates the overall cost of CMI across the state, this analysis will utilize a bottom-up approach that will examine the costs associated with the individuals with a CMI as they move through Arizona's criminal, public benefit, and physical and behavioral health systems. This approach lends itself to a highly-graphic system map and/or flow charts that could be enhanced with animation for use in PowerPoint display. For this study's purposes, chronic mental illness will be defined as a subset of the population with serious mental illness that is unable to settle into a stable living arrangement. The symptoms and behaviors exhibited by people with CMI make it difficult for them to remain either in an independent household or group housing for an extended period. This instability leads to the frequent use of high-cost services from various medical, behavioral, and criminal justice resources. The total costs of CMI are challenging to calculate because they are spread over an extensive network of services, and the nature of CMI means that these services are repeatedly accessed. Recognizing that each individual will process through this system in a slightly different matter, we will take a bottom-up approach to estimate these costs, focusing on the values of an individual at each node of the system.
We will hold a meeting to reveal the study findings. Subscribe to our newsletter for notification.
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