Sounds like Virginia’s mental health system is way past due for an overhaul. Reports Bill McKelway with the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Thirty years after a nationwide push to end the warehousing of mentally ill people in state hospitals, Virginia still faces a daunting task. Virginia is spending more money per capita than any other state on institutional care, its jails are teeming with mentally ill criminals, and community-based systems of care are lacking in all regions of the commonwealth.
The problem entails more than money. According to McKelway, Chief Justice Leroy R. Hassell Sr. said “civil commitment procedures, outmoded state laws that require findings of dangerousness, and shortcomings in community-based care are affecting every branch of government.”
The average caseload of a caseworker in Virginia is twice the national average. Patients wait more than a month on average to see a psychiatrist. The state cannot adequately track the care patients receive, much less its sucess or failure rate. And at any given time, about one-sixth of the 25,000 inmates of state jails suffer from mental illness.
In sum, the mentally ill aren’t getting the treatment they require, and Virginians are paying for housing more than necessary in institutions and jails. It strikes me that this is a case where improved services can be paid for, at least in part, through economic efficiencies.
(Photo credit of Eastern State Mental Hospital in Williamsburg, circa 1942: PBS.)
