Experts: Cuts could cripple mental services

AUGUSTA – People with mental illnesses and the professionals who support them filled the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee room at the State House on Wednesday, primarily to defend two programs they say have made the difference between life and death for hundreds of Maine residents.

Thousands of Mainers could lose access to mental health care services under the provisions of Gov. John Baldacci’s supplemental budget proposal, aimed at reducing state spending by $95 million over the current biennium. Of that amount, some $61.2 million has been carved out of anticipated spending in the Department of Health and Human Services alone, much of it drawn from community-based mental health services.

Proposed cuts in funding for the Amistad program in Portland and the Maine chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill elicited passionate testimony on Wednesday from individuals who have benefited from services the two organizations offer, including NAMI Maine’s successful Crisis Intervention Team program for law enforcement and corrections officials.

Carol Carothers, executive director of the Augusta-based NAMI Maine advocacy and education program, minced no words in addressing lawmakers at the public hearing.

“This budget decimates NAMI Maine to the extent that we will not be able to function,” she testified. “Last year’s budget removed $119 million [in state and matching federal dollars] from mental health spending; this budget cuts $38.8 million more. This unrelenting, multiyear focus on reducing access to treatment for a single illness – one that ranks only fifth in health care costs – must stop.”

Carothers said eliminating mental health services for adults and children who aren’t eligible for the state’s Medicaid program will cause “a cascade of problems for schools, jails, police departments, emergency rooms, homeless shelters, small businesses, families and people who are very ill.” And she cautioned that if NAMI Maine’s own funding dries up, as it would under the administration’s proposal, education and support services to hundreds of Maine families, treatment providers, institutions and communities would be eliminated.

Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross also warned against cutting mental health spending. Calling himself “the CEO of one of the largest mental health facilities in the state of Maine” – meaning the jail he oversees – Ross said 50 percent of his inmates at any given time are taking psychiatric medications. Since 2002, the Penobscot County Jail has been the site of four inmate suicides and 40 “very serious attempts,” he said.

“The crisis in our jails is in part due to the lack of community services since the deinstitutionalization of BMHI and AMHI,” Ross said. He credited Carothers and NAMI Maine with bringing the innovative Crisis Intervention Team training to Maine and working with law enforcement and corrections officials to develop effective methods of dealing with mentally ill individuals endangering themselves or others. Now there are CIT groups in 50 Maine communities and nine county jails.

If the other proposed cuts take effect, lawmakers should spare NAMI Maine’s funding, Ross said. “We’re going to need someone to pick up the pieces,” he said.

A dozen or more members of the Amistad Peer Center in Portland, many of them sporting pink felt hearts emblazoned with “Amistad is where the [heart] is,” spoke of the important role the organization has played in their lives.

Jamie Wood told committee members that her severe anxiety had kept her isolated in her group home for many months before a friend persuaded her to visit the day treatment center for a meal. Since connecting with a case manager at Amistad five years ago, she said, she has improved the management of her mental illness, gotten a job, moved out of her institutional residence, made friends, lost weight and gotten her driver’s license.

“This is a wonderful place,” she told the attentive lawmakers. “I don’t know what I would do if Amistad hadn’t been there for me.”

Charles Veit, vice president of the Amistad governing board and a mental health services consumer, testified that the program serves about 130 people a day, six days a week. Many members are homeless, recently released from incarceration or drug-addicted, Veit said. Those who take advantage of the program report greater stability in their lives and fewer hospitalizations, incarcerations or crisis calls.

Paid an average of $12.40 per person per day for the counseling and support services it offers, Amistad has been flat-funded for the past 13 years, Veit noted.

“We may be the biggest bargain in state government,” he said – adding that the proposed cuts would likely spell the end of the Amistad.

Lawmakers will be taking public testimony on a range of budget-cutting proposals this week, then moving into workshop sessions to make changes and recommendations.