News & Press

 

Community Wellness: Legislature makes recommendations to improve mental health system

 

By Robert Lathers, LMSW          

The Michigan House of Representatives’ C.A.R.E.S. Task Force issued its final report last week calling for improvements to the Michigan mental health system. C.A.R.E.S. stands for “Community, Access, Resources, Education and Safety.” The task force spent the past several months traveling around the state conducting public hearings.

I have served the past 25 years of my career in the public mental health system and have had the privilege to testify in front of this task force twice. The first time, sharing my own deeply personal story left me teary-eyed and emotional before I was finished, but the second time I offered some strong suggestions and recommendations accumulated as a result of my professional experience.

I find most of the task force’s final recommendations fundamentally sound. They include:

Increased services to children, including giving CMH priority to foster children and providing mental health training to teachers and counselors. These are things The Right Door for Hope, Recovery and Wellness already tries to focus on, but we can do better if all providers and partners are willing to come together.

Increase support for Michigan veterans is another recommendation. I absolutely agree. The Right Door currently hosts the Ionia County Veterans Services office, where providers of services to veterans are welcome to establish local office hours. Some providers have already done so, including the V.A., which has established a tele-medicine station at our Ionia office. Serving veterans should always be a priority for local mental health agencies.

Improve services to crime victims and encourage the use of crime victim advocates including canines. I really like this, but I’m not sure how to make it happen in community mental health settings. We can be better partners in this area.

Make services more efficient for patients with mild or moderate mental health needs. Let’s address issues when they initially appear, rather than wait until they grow into more serious problems. The community mental health system is currently funded and basically restricted to address only “serious problems,” but we have the expertise to address earlier day-to-day problems before they get bigger. Let us do it.

Capture more funds for substance abuse programs. This recommendation, if it could get strong support and funding from policy makers, is worth the whole report. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more needed than addressing substance abuse, especially alcohol and prescription drug abuse (opioids) in our community.

Provide crisis intervention training and resources to law enforcement and first responders. This recommendation, when fully implemented, makes everyone safer — police officers, EMTs and the person who is the target of their intervention.

Address the shortage of case managers and social workers. There are so many ideas about how to do this. If we can successfully address this, more community mental health social workers can be placed in schools and jails. The Right Door and local schools, especially Ionia, have been working on co-funding positions for the past several years. The Right Door has assigned two social workers to work with courts and the jail, but that is barely addressing the need.

Promote and expand Michigan’s problem-solving courts and expand diversion programs. These recommendations comprise a major section of this report. It also includes improved mental health care for persons in prison or who are on parole.

 

In the introduction of this final report, House Speaker Tom Leonard said that “reforming our broken mental health system” was at the top of his list of priorities. Now his members have given him a basic blueprint to move forward. The challenge will be if the Legislature has the ability to align current and future funding restrictions and formulas, imposed by the state and the federal government, to move forward. Hopefully they will make community, access, resources, education and safety part of a new and improved mental health system.

 

For a full copy of the task force report, go to bit.ly/2DtNwsQ.

 

— Robert Lathers, LMSW, is the CEO of The Right Door for Hope, Recovery and Wellness, formerly Ionia County Community Mental Health. His email address is rlathers@rightdoor.org. He welcomes your comments and questions. If you have a mental health emergency, call 911 or our 24-hour crisis line at 1-888-527-1790. Visit The Right Door online at rightdoor.org and find them on Facebook. The Right Door in Ionia is now open every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.