News and Commentary from the
Treatment Advocacy Center
February 2020
Below is a summary of recent developments and compelling stories from news outlets across the country that help to highlight America's broken mental health treatment system, and ways we can help fix it.
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Mental Health Crisis Hidden Behind Bars
Our Research Director, Elizabeth Hancq, was interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition discussing the mental health care crisis that is hidden in the american jail system. Morning Edition highlighted LA's Twin Towers Jail's severe shortage of psychiatric beds and psychiatrist. Though the article focuses on LA's Jail this is an epidemic across the country. Hancq was quoted saying "Local jails and prisons have become the de facto mental health institutions, it's really a humanitarian crisis that if you suffer from a severe mental illness in this country, you almost need to commit a crime in order to get into the system." Read the rest of the article here.
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Iowa's Mental Illness resource shortage
Iowa is currently struggling with a lack of resources for those with severe mental illness. They come in 47th for amount of psychiatrists to residents, 44th for mental health workforce availability, and 51st for state psychiatric beds to residents. The Clinton Herald used our statistics on the shortage of beds in the United States, Iowa has about 1.2 available beds per 100,000 people. Read more here.
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More Psychiatric Beds are needed as Suicide Deaths Increase
Former APA president, Steven Sharfstein, and TAC Research Director, Elizabeth Hancq submitted an opinion piece to the Baltimore Sun on the need for more psychiatric beds as suicides increase. Hancq and Sharfstein say that "Boarding of psychiatric patients in emergency departments is commonplace, in large part due to waiting for an open psychiatric bed. The low availability of psychiatric beds has contributed to the trend for very short stays, averaging four or five days. Patients are discharged quicker but sicker contributing to the high risk of suicide after discharge from a psychiatric inpatient stay. We need more psychiatric beds to have more time to stabilize patients in crisis and to come up with a diagnosis and treatment plan." Read the article here.
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Story of the month: White House’s FY2021 Budget Proposal |
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In an op-ed published in conjunction with February's announcement, White House Domestic Policy Council Director Joe Grogan reiterated, “All Americans with serious mental illnesses have the ability to lead productive and dignified lives. It’s time they have access to the care they need.” It is encouraging to see the core issues of aBedInstead emphasized in President Trump’s full budget proposal, which calls for an unprecedented infusion of federal funding to support the elimination of the discriminatory Institutions for Mental Diseases (IMD) exclusion.
Severe mental illness truly knows no political party; our national psychiatric bed shortage is a crisis that devastates red and blue states alike. Multiple 2020 Democratic candidates have each called for the elimination of the IMD exclusion, recognizing how the outdated policy has devastated bed availability in Iowa, New Hampshire and the entire nation.
While TAC is pleased to see that the President’s budget proposal contains much-needed funding to address severe mental illness, we remain concerned that these positive developments are accompanied by efforts to eliminate Medicaid expansion or introduce block granting of the government health program. Those with severe mental illness and their families depend on the availability of Medicaid services, and attempts to restrict the program’s reach would unnecessarily harm those same populations benefited by the elimination of the IMD exclusion.
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RESEARCH WEEKLY: February Recap
DATAPOINT of the month
Suicide is the leading cause of death in jail, accounting for 31% of inmate deaths in 2016.
Suicide has been the leading cause of death in jail for many years, and 2016 is no exception, according to data released this month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice. More than 31% of all deaths of individuals incarcerated in state and local jails in 2016 were due to suicide. Approximately 40% of all deaths in jail during that year occurred during the first week of incarceration. More than one in five (21%) of all suicide deaths that occurred in a jail between 2000-2016 happened while the individual was in solitary confinement.
If you are interested in reading the research highlights from this month you can click here
To receive Research Weekly directly in your email inbox on a weekly basis, click here.
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