THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 14, 1997 TAG: 9701140002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By MARK EARLEY
LENGTH: 78 lines
They are our neighbors, whose voices are never heard.
They are our children, whose faces are never seen.
They are our friends, our parents, the family across the street or across the commonwealth, and they are individuals whose lives have worth, dignity and great value.
They are the more than 185,000 Virginians who are receiving services from our public mental-health system today, and the several thousand more who will need services by the year 2000.
They are Virginians who receive services that cost almost a billion dollars in 1995, and they are not strangers.
Virginians have always cared for our friends, families and neighbors who need special help, but that fragile network of care for the mentally ill, the mentally retarded and substance abusers can be easily unraveled, and is indeed facing new and dangerous stresses.
About 26 years ago, Virginia joined a national move for the treatment of mental disorders by beginning the process of deinstitutionalization, moving many patients out of state residential facilities into community programs, and established a system of community service boards to provide service to the mentally ill, mentally retarded and later to substance abusers.
Virginia has done an aggressive job of moving patients from a highly restrictive institutionalized setting, as populations in state institutions have dropped from 14,670 in 1970 to about 4,660 in 1995. But when we returned those Virginians to our communities, we did not commit the necessary resources to return to our communities along with them.
There are increasing risks that our mental health, mental retardation and substance abuse resources are just not going to be adequate for the job, and we will all lose.
Let's look at that point. A collapse, or a steady slide into mediocrity, of our service network does cost all of us. It costs our social fabric and our tax bills; it costs in lost security and diminished lives.
If our mental-health services are not adequate, treatment suffers. Virginians who need help to make it will not find a meaningful life, will not be able to live in healthy family settings, will not be able to join the work force and contribute to our communities.
If we cannot provide mentally retarded Virginians necessary training, development and educational opportunities, families suffer, and we all lose the contributions these Virginians want to make to our society.
If substance-abuse services falter, we feel it immediately, on our streets, in our schools, in our homes. It has been estimated that as much as 80 percent of our juvenile crime is substance-abuse related, and without treatment that percentage and that risk to all our lives can only increase.
Those are the challenges we see, and it is for that reason that Virginia's legislature decided to take another look at our system of service delivery, and our management of public resources for mental health, mental retardation and substance abuse.
In 1996, a special bipartisan legislative study commission was authorized to begin a two-year project to examine our principles and goals for that system, to determine the necessary level of public resources for that program and the most effective and efficient means of providing those resources.
Our commission, on which I am privileged to serve, has conducted a series of hearings around the commonwealth, visiting facilities and programs, listening to local officials and consumers of services, talking with experts and lay citizens, elected officials, service providers and advocacy groups. We will continue the study in 1997, but this session provides us with an opportunity that we must not miss, to begin to address some of our actual needs, especially in the area of residential services for the mentally disabled.
Our needs are manifest and tangible; our response must be equally solid. Virginia once led the nation in providing institutional services for those so in need. We now need the commitment and the resources to develop similar leadership for community-based programs. With that commitment, we will find new and more effective solutions, more substantive programs, better answers and our fragile network can be rewoven.
If you believe, as I do, in the worth and dignity of each individual life, one thing is certain: Business as usual is not good enough. MEMO: Mark Earley is a Virginia state senator.
KEYWORDS: ANOTHER VIEW