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By Jessie Wolfe
In this day and age of social media, the Internet and wall-to-wall news coverage that barrages us at every turn, we’re forced to confront issues and events everyday. My previous blog post mentioned one such issue (the maltreatment of patients at Bridgewater State Hospital), and while highlighting such concerns is important, I believe that in some cases by becoming so focused on specific issues we miss the forest for the trees. We examine incidents, but aren’t always good about pulling back and considering the systemic issues that created those incidents. So, I thought I would spend this second post stepping back and focusing on one of the broader issues affecting mental health today: funding. It is funding, or really lack thereof, that leads to problems across the mental health system. In worst-case scenarios, it is lack of funding that can lead to poorly served and treated individuals, who in turn may end up in incidents across our news coverage.
Governor Patrick’s FY14 budget proposal included a very modest 3.3% increase to the Department of Mental Health’s budget, an agency that is already woefully underfunded. In fact, when comparisons across years are adjusted for inflation, funding for mental health has decreased by 11.7% between FY01 and FY14. Looked at in that context, the 3.3% increase proposed barely makes a dent in restoring the budget to what it was only 13 years ago. The underfunded nature of mental health becomes even starker when compared to other health care and services coverage within the state’s budget. As seen below, when adjusting for GDP growth, the budget for mental health has decreased by 22.2%, and remains, along side public health, one of the worst funded among health care and service priorities.
Source: Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center
Clearly, something must be done. Until mental health is recognized as just as important as physical health and other services, and funded as such, people will continue to struggle to get the services they need. We will continue to have to deal with issues and events as they arise, rather than putting in place the infrastructure to prevent them in the first place. A good mental health care system requires access to a variety of quality supports and treatments at both the outpatient and inpatient level that can act as prevention and intervention. Putting into place that kind of system takes money. Mental health deserves to be funded like other priorities and services in the health care system.
Health Advocacy at NEU 