|
Budget Priorities
Housing
Last year’s New York/New York III agreement was a good first step to resolving the longstanding critical housing shortage for citizens living with mental illness in New York City. In ten years, it is expected to provide 5,000 units of the at least 40,000 additional units needed to make stable, safe, decent, affordable and permanent supportive housing available to persons with psychiatric disabilities in New York State.
What is now desperately needed is a viable, long-term program to provide at least 35,000 more units, and to support and improve the housing that already exists, on Long Island and upstate as well as in New York City. The state should be developing at least 4,000 additional units a year. Presently, state-assisted housing is available to only 13.7% of those New Yorkers with a serious mental illness.
Funding is also needed this year for improvements to adult homes who house persons with psychiatric disabilities, including $5 million for case management services and $3 million for legal advocacy.
The Office of Mental Health’s Single Point of Entry process does not assign any priority to adult children who are living at home with their aging parents. According to an OMH study requested by the State Senate, the mortality rate of family members who provide housing to their psychiatrically disabled loved ones is about 1,200 per year. The state needs to do its share when the family members no longer can do theirs.
Medicaid and Medicare
For hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers with serious mental illnesses, Medicaid is the lifeline for access to life-saving, recovery-fostering treatment, medication, housing and support services. The 2006 advent of the Medicare Part D prescription drug “benefit,” under which primary drug coverage for “Dual Eligible” New Yorkers shifted from Medicaid to Medicare, added yet another safety net role to the program through its “Wraparound” drug benefit.
In its efforts to rein in the costs of this vital program, New York State must ensure that cost-containment not lead to “care containment;” that the health and safety of our most vulnerable citizens not be placed at the mercy of HMOs; that prescribing decisions be made by physicians and their patients, not bureaucrats in Albany or Washington, and that “nominal” drug co-payments not place an undue burden on the disabled and destitute. True reform must begin with creating a system of care that is coordinated, accessible and based on evidence-based practices such as the disease management approach successfully utilized by other states to serve high-need, at-risk populations, improving lives and saving money without scrimping on care.
Research
Efforts to slowly starve mental health research must cease. Keep the world-class Nathan S. Kline and Psychiatric Institutes intact, fully-staffed and working toward new treatments, such as a much-needed third generation of anti-psychiatric medications. Research is our hope for the future.
Community and Safety Net Services
According to the 2003 OMH Patient Characteristics Study, only 22 percent of the individuals identified as having serious mental illness received the most essential community support services, such as vocational, case management, self-help and housing services. That percentage has probably gone through the funding cuts and attrition that has happened since then.
The number of the state’s Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams must be expanded. Too many people are at risk when they could be recovering with the help of this service. Services that will help families to better help their ill loved ones are also greatly needed.
Legislative Priorities
Violent Sexual Predators
Legislators must not approve the creation of an artificial mental disorder to allow psychiatric facilities to become holding pens for violent sexual predators. To do so would cause irreparable harm to mental health care in New York State, would cost a prohibitive amount of money and would not make New Yorkers any safer. Legislators should listen to the experts and create an effective, cost-effective and comprehensive way to protect our communities from violent sexual predators though our criminal justice system.
Solitary Confinement in State Prisons
What goes on in our prisons’ Special Housing Units (SHUs) should not be tolerated by any civilized society. S00333, a bill to ban the torture by solitary confinement of state prisoners with a serious mental illness has been reintroduced by Chairman of the state Senate Crime and Correction Committee Michael Nozzolio. This year, the bureaucratic obstacles that have been put in the way of this bill must be overcome.
Timothy’s Law
Now that it has been enacted, Timothy’s Law must be fully implemented in a timely manner. The law must also be expanded to provide full parity for everyone, including the employees of companies with fewer than 50 people. Parity must also be expanded to include the full range of services, including chemical dependency services.
|
