To: The Texas State House, The Texas State Senate, and Governor Greg Abbott
Increase Texas Government Investment in Mental Health
ncrease Texas Government Investment in Mental Health
Why is this important?
Unfortunately, the ideal of streamlining mental health treatment can be turned on its axis by forces beyond our control.
Taking the subway one stop past sanity, the state of Texas has decided to be tightfisted; free falling to dead last among all 50 states in mental health expenditures. In turn, this has tipped the scale in favor of astronomical numbers of people needing services juxtaposed to fewer professionals with lower pay and benefits. Waiting lists have swelled unabated in some areas. Psychiatrists, case managers, and those in the trenches are having difficulty shouldering the load of mental health patients that get services. These unappreciated professionals are dedicated, self-sacrificing, and compassionate yet their pay and benefits barely rise above the threshold of most janitorial jobs. Even the most skilled service coordinators, with time management creativity, can’t clone themselves to be at 50 places at once. Pinched for time, the franchise mentality has taken hold as patients are rushed through the psychiatry drive-thru, each receiving a therapeutic happy meal. Mc-therapy is taking the place of measured, time-spent, palliative modalities that foster better outcomes. Feeding the soul/psyche is immeasurably more complex than feeding the body.
Meager spending and the DSHS paradigm shift to Resiliency and Disease Management has resulted in turning away droves of people who do not fit neatly into the diagnostic trifecta: schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and major depression. People with personality disorders, dissociative disorders, and anxiety disorders are dumped cargo; jettisoned out of public services with no safety parachute.
Paying little homage to mental health care has a price tag; one of them being the Texas penal system is the new makeshift hospital for mental health consumers. Emergency rooms and hospitals also absorb the overflow, but what never seems to factor into this is the immense human suffering that results. Why are people left in the unforgivable throes of mental illness with no relief in the state of Texas?
Taking the subway one stop past sanity, the state of Texas has decided to be tightfisted; free falling to dead last among all 50 states in mental health expenditures. In turn, this has tipped the scale in favor of astronomical numbers of people needing services juxtaposed to fewer professionals with lower pay and benefits. Waiting lists have swelled unabated in some areas. Psychiatrists, case managers, and those in the trenches are having difficulty shouldering the load of mental health patients that get services. These unappreciated professionals are dedicated, self-sacrificing, and compassionate yet their pay and benefits barely rise above the threshold of most janitorial jobs. Even the most skilled service coordinators, with time management creativity, can’t clone themselves to be at 50 places at once. Pinched for time, the franchise mentality has taken hold as patients are rushed through the psychiatry drive-thru, each receiving a therapeutic happy meal. Mc-therapy is taking the place of measured, time-spent, palliative modalities that foster better outcomes. Feeding the soul/psyche is immeasurably more complex than feeding the body.
Meager spending and the DSHS paradigm shift to Resiliency and Disease Management has resulted in turning away droves of people who do not fit neatly into the diagnostic trifecta: schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and major depression. People with personality disorders, dissociative disorders, and anxiety disorders are dumped cargo; jettisoned out of public services with no safety parachute.
Paying little homage to mental health care has a price tag; one of them being the Texas penal system is the new makeshift hospital for mental health consumers. Emergency rooms and hospitals also absorb the overflow, but what never seems to factor into this is the immense human suffering that results. Why are people left in the unforgivable throes of mental illness with no relief in the state of Texas?