[NYAPRS Enews] Plotnick: Mental Health Care Needs Better Funding, not Coercive Laws

[Briana Gilmore]

NYAPRS Note: NYAPRS has been increasingly involved in working with our friends in the recovery and rights communities along with national advocacy groups and Congressional Representatives to reshape the debate and the terms of any legislative action on the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. The response to a recent editorial below summarizes the needs we will continue to advocate for at a national level in Washington, D.C.

Mental health care needs better funding, not coercive laws
Washington Post; Debbie Plotnick, 4/18/2014

The problems with the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act ["A mental health check-up," editorial, April 17] go beyond its expansion of involuntary treatment. It defunds and devalues services that are most important to the people to whom legislation should be directed. The reasons people can't get treatment are underfunding and a lack of coordination. We need a comprehensive strategy for people in crisis that assertively engages these individuals where they are - physically and psychologically - and helps them craft a recovery plan that is responsive to their individual needs and circumstances.

We also need to prioritize prevention and early intervention initiatives rather than gutting them. That means recognizing the value of peer services, which are effective in engaging people. And it means strengthening protection and advocacy services that rescue the most vulnerable individuals from unsafe and abusive living situations.

We need services and supports that afford people help immediately, rather than waiting until they're really sick. We absolutely need more family involvement. But we won't achieve it by mandating that all federal administrators be clinicians or by conditioning scarce resources on states enacting more coercive laws.

Debbie Plotnick, Alexandria
The writer is senior director of state policy for Mental Health America
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mental-health-care-needs-better-funding-not-coercive-laws/2014/04/18/d4e0ceb4-c706-11e3-b708-471bae3cb10c_story.html
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