Mental health: Timely services and treatment

Ben Rogers, guest columnist

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, approximately 1 in 17 adults in the United States is diagnosed with a serious and persistent mental illness like schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. These are brain-based diseases that create chemical imbalances within the brain much like diabetes impacts the body's ability to produce and regulate insulin. However, there are gross disparities and inequities between health care services and mental health care in Iowa.

Nationally, Iowa ranks near the bottom for the number of trained psychiatrists in the state, the number of psychiatric beds, inadequate data collection, complex funding formulas of federal and state dollars and lack of early detection and prevention of mental illnesses in schools. Our state is lacking enough resources to adequately treat people with mental illness.

Recently, Governor Branstad announced the closure of two state facilities that treat the severely mentally ill. Some believe that they can live in less institutional settings or independently within the community. This approach may work for some, but for people with severe mental illness who are prone to violent tendencies against themselves or others, living in the community is not safe for the individual or the community. We need to stop treating the mentally ill with a one-size fits all approach to funding and services and ensure a wide array of treatment options and services.

It is not uncommon in Iowa for a person with a mental illness to end up in the emergency room - the most expensive form of health care - for treatment. Due to the lack of available psychiatric beds and psychiatrists, these individuals can wait for days in an emergency room. Imagine if you suffered a heart attack and for several days you had to wait in the emergency room for a hospital bed to open up or to see a heart specialist. Both the bed and the specialist may not be in Cedar Rapids or even Eastern Iowa, so you have to travel to a different city for treatment. This is the reality for those suffering with severe mental illnesses: they can wait days for treatment that may require them to travel across the state.

As a community, we can begin to change the tide through greater compassion, understanding and advocacy for our family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers who suffer with a disease that is often hidden in plain sight. The stigma associated with having a mental illness is such that many who have it don't want to talk about it and those who need treatment may be embarrassed to seek help. Oftentimes we don't know the best way to help, but having this conversation is a good place to start.

I refer to Linn County government as the ‘safety net for the safety net' as we are often a service provider of last resort. This past July, Linn County joined eight other counties to form the East Central Region for Mental Health and Disability Services. One of the goals within the regional system is to ensure uniformity in the services provided to rural and urban residents across the state. Services aim to help keep individuals with a mental illness out of jails, institutional care and emergency rooms and provide wrap-around services that are less expensive and help address other issues related to their mental illness like substance abuse and emotional trauma. Despite these efforts, people with mental illness still end up in emergency rooms and jails. Approximately 23 percent of the inmate population in the Linn County correctional center takes a prescription psychotropic medication paid for by taxpayers.

Other efforts by Linn County include services to identify a mental illness early in a child's life. Linn County's Child Development Center is a full-day early childhood program for children from 3 to 5 years of age. Children at the center have been removed from other classrooms due to their behavioral issues, which may be related to a mental illness. Through a variety of programming and services, Linn County helps families identify and treat these issues early, which not only saves taxpayer dollars but also gives the child every chance to succeed by helping to divert them from costlier services, like juvenile detention or incarceration, later in life.

Our state's greatest resources are the people of Iowa. We can, and must, do better to provide timely services and treatment to those with a severe mental illness.

' Ben Rogers serves on the Linn County Board of Supervisors and represents District 3 which covers most of the North East side of Cedar Rapids. Comments: (319) 892-5106; ben.rogers@linncounty.org