(Updated) Paper investigates mental health services in the mountains

by Staff ~ November 8th, 2008. Filed under: Health Care.

REGIONAL–Former Asheville Citizen Times editor and reporter Quinton Ellison has developed a three-part series for CNI papers investigating the state of services in .

Part One: Mental health reform fails to empower

[Reform has created a] that has wasted, not saved, millions of tax dollars. And worse, many of the state’s most vulnerable residents are unable to obtain adequate treatments. For those people and their families, the price has been incalculable.

Part Two: Not enough service providers in western North Carolina

[Some say] reform - that great blueprint for change the General Assembly launched in 2001 – has been a dismal failure. And the losers have been the thousands of suffering from mental illnesses who are receiving inadequate treatment and help.

Part Three: Funding, local control needed

“The system needs to be less complicated and have more local involvement,” Macon County Commissioner Ronnie Beale says. “Our needs may be different from Rutherford County, which may be different from Wake County. And, with local input and local control, you have to have the local funding.”

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1 Response to (Updated) Paper investigates mental health services in the mountains

  1. Marsha V. Hammond, PhD: Clinical Licensed Psychologist
    December 8th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

    1. There is no shortage of mental health providers in western NC. Smoky Mountain Center LME, largest LME in NC, has NO BASIC SERVICES. Professional providers have no place under an LME that has no spot for them. SMC LME has Community Support Services (CSS) which is constantly being defunded and requires professional providers to submit to 20+hrs of unpaid, unnecessary CSS training—when we provide therapy and assessment. And they have their spin-off, Meridian Behavioral Health which is mostly not professional level providers being propped up by the WRAP program which is manned by non-professional peer support people paid close to a minimum wage.
    2. Money has not been wasted; indeed, NC is spending LESS on mental health care than it did several yrs ago (see http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/?p=2253). RE: all those ‘pay backs’ as per those bad apple Endorsed Provider private companies, the pay back was mostly on the basis of the PAPERWORK not the work that was administered.
    3. The system needs Basic Services. Why doesn’t the largest LME in NC have any Basic Level Services?
    4. Western Highlands Network (WHN), the only other LME in western NC—together 25% of mental health administration in NC—cannot get its authorization of state funded clients together EITHER.
    5. What is going to happen as these LME’s start to fade into overseeing Medicaid?—-the only mental health service that pays professional providers independent of the LME’s and fairly well? Shall we collapse the system COMPLETELY?
    Marsha V. Hammond, PhD: Clinical Licensed Psychologist NC mental health reform blogspot: http://madame-defarge.blogspot.com/

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