Pubdate: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 Source: Florida Today (Melbourne, FL) Copyright: 2007 Florida Today Contact: http://www.flatoday.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/532 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) COSTLY, SENSELESS, CRUEL Florida Needs a Much Better System for Treating Its Mentally Ill Citizens Call them psychiatric warehouses. That's how a report released by Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Lewis and Gov. Charlie Crist describes Florida's jails and prisons, where as many as 125,000 people with mental illnesses in need of treatment get housed each year. Most state mental institutions were closed in the 1960s and 70s -- supposedly a transition to more humane, community-based care. But funding for local mental health services never materialized. Since then Sunshine State jails have become de facto mental institutions, says the report. That includes the Brevard County jail in Sharpes, where about 20 percent of 1,830 inmates have some form of mental illness, ranging from minor to acute, according to Lt. Darrell Hibbs of the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. Roughly 400 jail inmates go through mental health screening each month, showing why a new medical and mental health annex is so direly needed. The annex is expected to open in March, and the county will spend $7.3 million to staff it. The state's inadequate mental health care system also impacted Brevard's jail in 2006, when at least eight seriously mentally ill inmates found incompetent to stand trial were left there much longer than allowed by law, meaning costs for their treatment were dumped on local taxpayers. That led Sheriff Jack Parker to consider legal action against the state. The situation has been resolved temporarily, but is just a little part of what's wrong with Florida's mental health system, as detailed in the 170-page report. The study group has rightly called for a radical fix that could keep many of the mentally ill out of the criminal justice system from the start, not to mention save the state millions of dollars. It won't be easy, but here's what they recommend: Redirecting some dollars now spent to lodge mentally ill inmates to pay for local mental health care networks throughout the state, starting with $20 million next year. Preventative services, including drug-abuse treatment, for the mentally ill at risk of incarceration could eventually save the state $250 million annually, according to the report. The program would target low-level offenders, such as drug and battery suspects, not murderers, rapists or sex offenders. That sounds like a promising strategy for the state to pursue, so long as it doesn't turn into a bait and switch to pass more costs along to localities already in a cash-crunch. Using millions of dollars from the state-federal Medicaid program to cover treatment costs. Again, that sounds like a way to mitigate the rising expense of jailing the mentally ill, whose numbers are expected to double by 2015 unless dramatic changes are made But if those Medicaid dollars are available, why haven't they been tapped before? Despite some misgivings, we support the push to make prevention, and humane, community-based treatment the cornerstone of Florida's mental health system. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake