Where Mental Health Is Needed

It came to me as no small shock to read the proposed changes in the housing policy for the Department of Mental Health. Admittedly the DMH has faced some daunting problems, as they state from the outset. The waiting list grows steadily as more and more people face homelessness. The cost of housing continues to rise. Meanwhile, DMH funding remains static. In these times of austerity, the reality remains that more and more people get bumped off programs and more people are denied housing. It’s a no-win situation for a lot of people and the sad reality is that a lot of people facing a lot of stress will face even more stress, probably to the point of breaking. The purpose of aiding the mentally ill will probably be defeated in the process.

Suggestions include raising the ceiling on subsidies so that consumers pay a larger amount of the rent, which will enable the funds to go further. For persons with larger incomes, perhaps the pinch will not be so great, but for persons living on shoestring allowances, such as Interim Disability Assistance, the increase will be painful indeed. Many of the other proposals ignore several of the realities that consumers face, much as the Department of Mental Health refuses to acknowledge many of the realities that consumers face in life. The “take your meds and shut up” philosophy is painfully evident in the proposals that are being made.

The Department of Mental Health cannot be blamed for the lack of funding it receives. There is no way to get blood from a turnip, as the saying goes, and the Department of Mental Health, like all the other organizations living with neo-Victorian realities, must find ways to stretch the dollar. Belt tightening means just that, and people will feel the pinch. In this case, the people feeling the pinch will be the most defenseless ones. Congress did not think twice about slicing the budget that pared down Medicaid so that the poor were hurt; the Department of Mental Health has considerably less reason than Congress to harm its consumers and is not acting with the same heartlessness in making the decisions that it must make, but the end result is still quite painful to the consumers.

What alarms me is that I can only envision how the Department of Mental Health will apply its criteria in making decisions, and that alarms me greatly. I have been talking for two years now about the complex realities that many consumers face, mostly with my words falling on deaf ears. It seems that there are more than a few bugs in the system, if such a system indeed exists. The proposals speak of how only persons who are “seriously mentally ill qualify for DMH subsidies”; does this mean One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest mentally ill? If so, why wouldn’t such people be institutionalized rather than housed among the general public? The language of some of the proposals is confusing, needless to say, if not alarming.

Some of the proposals ignore the many exceptions that I have pointed out since 2003. It is precisely this “don’t raise the bridge, lower the river” mentality that keeps many functionaries in their jobs but leaves problems unsolved for generations to come. Because I am results oriented, I would suggest considering all the aspects of the proposals before making any decisions, as there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water, something that I know the Department of Mental Health truly does not want to do.

It’s a win-win situation to get the homeless back into mainstream society. Treat the problem, not the symptoms. Closing one’s eyes to the problem and hoping it will go away on its own is just folly. Not being Erasmus, I’m not here to praise folly; I’m here to eliminate it.

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