Dwindling mental health options

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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It's unwelcome news to hear that financial difficulties will force The Abbe Center for Community Care, Inc. to permanently close its doors next month.

Last week, officials with the long-term mental health facility in Marion announced that they would start trying to find other options for the approximately 75 people with mental illness the facility now serves.

In a news release, they pointed to a $1.4 million reduction in county funding and questions about inpatient resources going forward.

The Abbe Center's closing further reduces our state's already low availability of resources for people with acute mental illness.

Over the past few decades, there has been a shift away from institutional-type settings for people with mental illness and developmental disabilities. That's been a positive change.

But while it's important that people with acute mental health issues are able to live in the least restrictive environment that's safe for them and the community, there always will be some for whom community-based resources, such as group homes, will not provide enough structure, supervision and care.

In a guest opinion published in these pages earlier this spring, Dr. Alan Whitters, chief of psychiatry at Cedar Rapids' Mercy Medical Center, and Dr. Rickard Larsen, medical director at St. Luke's Psychiatric Services in Cedar Rapids, wrote of the dearth of necessary services for people with severe and persistent mental illness. “County residential care facilities have atrophied or closed because of lack of funding,” they wrote. “Psychiatric units at both Mercy Medical Center and St Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids are constantly full and many patients are transported hundreds of miles from hospital emergency rooms just to find vacancies.”

“Even under the best of circumstances, caring for a mentally ill child or loved one is a long, hard journey,” the doctors wrote. “But the challenges are even more daunting in a mental health care system that is tragically broken.”

It's our responsibility to make sure our state has an adequate and healthy mix of services for people with mental health challenges - including acute care and residential options.

Some of Iowa's most vulnerable adults and their families depend upon it.

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