Helping mental health

State officials reforming Maine’s mental health system recently received a useful reminder from a person experienced in the field.

Denise Dunning, who had worked at Bangor Mental Health Institute’s Pooler Pavilion for seven years and now is employed as an intervention worker for mentally retarded adults in group-home environments, offered this: “The best advice I could give as they consider community-based programs is to make sure they have everything in place before they move people out of the institutions. They will also have to realize that many patients will not receive the same level of care as they did at BMHI.”

Unfortunately, the state has been moving people out of institutions for two decades without having everything in place, and the results — the mentally ill on the streets, in homeless shelters and in jails — have been a cruel failure of Maine government. Gov. Angus King and Mental Health Commissioner Melodie Peet promise this time will be different, and there is reason to believe them. That does not mean, however, that Maine needs to rush through the reform to meet a budget line or a political expectation.

The other half of the advice, that the state still will require a mental-health institution, also is valid. The cost of maintaining the state mental-health institutes is high, and certainly, with so few patients, Maine does not need both BMHI and the Augusta Mental Health Institute. Neverthless, Dunning makes sense when she points out the need for a support team available 24 hours a day and that, in some cases, an institutional setting could eventually prove more cost effective. A continued state operation also helps ensure that services will be available no matter what happens to private care companies.

Twenty years of turf wars, wasted opportunities and budget cuts within the mental-health system have had a devastating effect on countless Maine residents. The King administration and members of the Legislature must consider this history as they try to reshape the current system.