News-Record.com

The mental health system is not broken, but totally mismanaged and lacks the understanding of NC's rapid population growth and the financial commitment that is needed. Bureaucracy is out of control and providers have to deal with constant changes and pitiful reimbursement rates for some services. Paperwork is redundant and time consuming putting strain on the providers of services. Consumers cannot find care in many areas as the system decisions have made it difficult and unappealing for new companies to provide care.

Our mental health system has been deterioriating for some time, and is often described by mental health consumers, family members, advocates and professionals as a "train wreck". Yes, in my opinion, our state mental health system is broken.
Increasing and alarming numbers of people with mental illness are being denied appropriate care and are filling emergency rooms, homeless shelters, jails, and yes, even cemetaries. Most of your readers would likely be shocked to learn how many people with mental illness are being discharged from psychiatric hospitals to homeless shelters! They are often discharged way too soon, before becoming medically stable, without any followup plan for care in their local community. This is a calamity waiting to happen. The costs of untreated mental illness are enormous; the tragedy at Virginia Tech could just as easily have happened here. Community-based services are not yet adequate to continue to close hospital beds for those in a mental health crisis. There is no safety net for an already huge and still growing number of people with brain disorders. While ineffective program administration is a major part of the statewide crisis, lack of will on the part of the executive and legislative branches of our state government to address the failure of mental health Reform has taken its toll. Yesterday's announcement from Secretary Benton that he has a plan to "fix" the system is a welcome start, but only a beginning, as the crisis goes much deeper than the major high-profile problems at our state hospitals. The National Alliance on Mental Illness conducted a national project, NAMI Grades the States, and North Carolina received a grade of D+. Sounds broken to me.

Our system is most certainly broken/ Clients were promised that their services would not change if they were in the target population and there would be places that would work as the county centers did for clients that just have Medicare and can't afford to pay the 50% they don't pay. Did that happen? NO. For example the main community support place in Randolph County is overloaded and also is changing staff very frequently leaving clinets with around 4-5 different staff members who were wtheir worker just since April. Noone takes Medicare as full payment like the state promised so those of us with medicare and cant afford to pay the difference have lost all care. People with no insurance get better care than those of us with Medicare and on disability. Wake up NC! The state system is falling apart and peopleare being discharged from hospitals before they are ready bc of the cost and bc of the overload. The state lost some excellent workers when they cut almost all the programs from the county run centers. Those still working for or contracted with the state are now overloaded and having horrific amounts of staff changes. How is someone supposed to get anything out of a progra, where their worker is changed almost monthly. You can't gain trust that fast. We need to have services for everyone in the target population and not leave those who have some insurance out in the cold. The stqate is even now billing clients who had a zero fee assessment(ie accept their insurnace as full payment) for services they receieved when they were on zero.

One doesn't have to go far to answer that question. All one has to do, is look at the statistics in our crime rate, and look at the street corners of S. Elm-Eugene, and tell me if the mental health of our citizens is up to par.

Sometimes you can even see in the blogs.

The mental health system is totally mismanaged and quite clearly is not looking at the needs of the client/patient.

I know several client/patients that receive medication that they can't afford, that they don't need, or have been prescribed just to get them out of the office.

And another thing? Is being "bi-polar" really an
illness? Or just another way for these people to get more drugs at the taxpayers expense? And to qualify for programs that other, more qualified peopel should be getting?

Someone needs to go to the shed for this one. It has just gone out of control.

Sometimes I know that people claim to be "bipolar" when in reality--they are just seeking an excuse for their ill-manners or bad behaviors that they exhibit.
Truly, there are people who are bipolar and really do need the help. Due to the above mentioned, these people are not being helped at all.
These people are the ones who truly choose not to deal with the mental health system as it is now days!
They wanna be left alone to live their life just the way it is. I can only imagine sometimes it is better to be out on the streets than it is to be "pretending" to be mentally ill just to get the psychoactive drugs that are being prescribed.
Some of the drugs (Klonopin, Ativan---those type of drugs) are sold on the street for other drug money!
So yes, there are the "wanna" people who go under false purposes and get the drugs.
I truly hope that people can see those people for what they really are. Drug addicts and alcoholics should not be allowed to receive disability....They do bad choices so in order to get the drugs they so crave--they do the "bipolar" thing!!!
Can't the psychiatric community see this happening? After all, they need to be screening these folks better.