Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES:

Receding: New ground in care of mentally ill

Budget cuts will likely wipe out innovation, undo recent strides

Two years ago, a national group lauded Clark County for helping secure treatment for mentally ill people charged with nonviolent crimes.

The county’s mental health court is innovative and progressive because it moves qualifying mental health patients from jail into treatment, the National Association of Counties said. The Nevada Legislature voted to double the annual budget for the program to $2 million, which promised help for even more people, increasing chances they will be less of a burden on society.

But that money has disappeared in an early round of budget cuts, leaving the program at 2005 levels.

Mental health services for low-income Nevadans have lagged for years and had been gradually improving after deep cuts in the early 1990s.

Now the projected 14 percent cuts in the Nevada Mental Health and Developmental Services Division may wind up wiping out anything innovative or new.

“We’re just hunkering down and sticking to what we already know,” said Jim Osti, administrative analyst at the Southern Nevada Health District. That means no money for what Osti called “the best practices for future generations.”

So not only will new programs such as the mental health court be stunted, but many ideas will not become realities. Osti cited as an example a proposal for alleviating the valley’s crowded emergency rooms by setting up a triage center for mentally ill patients where they could obtain legally required medical clearances and initial psychological treatment in the same place. That too will remain undone for the foreseeable future.

Steve Grierson, assistant clerk and supervisor of the mental health court, recalls the 2007 decision to double its budget as “basically a recognition of the value of the program” — a program that had only gotten off the ground three years before.

Under it, low-income people with severe psychological problems could get help. Many of those people are homeless and are repeatedly charged with such misdemeanors as trespassing. The mental health court gave participants better lives and the wider community enjoyed less crime.

The budget cut “hurts progress,” Grierson said. Unfortunately, he added, “it’s usually more expensive to pay for new programs” because you pay for the learning curve as you discover what works. But the alternative is that cuts in innovative programs “affect another system, like law enforcement. It’ll wind up being more expensive down the road.”

Harold Cook, administrator of the state Mental Health and Developmental Services Division, said the coming state budget will continue to cut his agency’s funds, including money for anything that exists only on paper.

“I think it’s a foregone conclusion that the next budget will not include new programs,” he said. At the same time, Cook remains optimistic about being able to innovate within current programs. “We have a responsibility to advocate for innovation in the face of difficulty,” he said.

Osti said new ideas and practices are the only things that will pull Nevada into the 21st century when it comes to helping those who are not only lacking financial resources, but psychological and emotional health.

The state, Osti said, shouldn’t “use old methods of caring for people when there’s a better way.”

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