Milwaukee County greatly scales back proposed mental health facility

[Scuba]

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/120250929.html


<snip>

Reflecting a dramatic shift from institutional care for patients with mental illness, Milwaukee County would replace its outmoded Mental Health Complex with a scaled-down version costing up to $100 million in construction and interest costs, under a preliminary plan unveiled Tuesday.

The price represents a major cut from the nearly $180 million project the County Board was considering in 2008 and '09 with a plan to renovate St. Michael's Hospital. That plan was rejected by the County Board, with some supervisors then favoring new construction on the County Grounds. The new proposal reflects more recent thinking on the subject that emphasizes a shift to smaller, community-based facilities of 16 or fewer patients, making them eligible for federal aid. A consultant's report issued last year recommended that shift.

The new complex would serve about 120 patients, fewer than half the number now cared for at the sprawling 1970s structure on the County Grounds. The expectation of fewer patients is based on a likely move to more community care and efforts to reduce the need for psychiatric hospitalizations.

A series of reviews of Milwaukee County's mental health system has pointed to inconsistent outpatient care, leading to an unnecessarily high number of relapses.

"Our outpatient care stinks," said Supervisor Joe Sanfelippo, chairman of a County Board committee studying issues linked to a new mental health building. County staff drafted the new building plan for the panel.

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The system certainly needs alot of help, and qualifying for some Federal dollars won't hurt the county.

I must question the decision to locate the new facility on the County Grounds rather than at St. Michael's. St. Mike's is smack dab in the middle of Milwaukee's residential area. The County Grounds are on the far west edge, which means family members have a difficult bus commute to visit their loved ones.

It is closer to acute care at Froederdt Hospital, but I have to wonder how much the decision is weighted by psychiatric staff living in the burbs.

This is a chance to help families and help the area around 25th and Hampton maintain it's vitality.

Anyone with more info, please share.

[rurallib]

1. Is Wisconsin now one of the 'right to carry' states?

scaling back mental health care and making guns much more easily available is not a good combination.

[Scuba]

2. I believe Wisconsin is now the only State without a CCW law. Soon, I'm sure. n/t

[HereSince1628]

3. Mentally ill are not more dangerous than the mentally-well

Although it might be necessary to call the mentally-well the not yet diagnosed mentally ill. At any given time about 20% of the US population is acutely mentally ill.

Several studies directed at understanding the relationship between violence and mental illness have resulted in the same result...between 5 and 8% of the mentally ill commit violence. This range is about 1% larger than that for the mentally well. However, the studies did reveal strong associations with violence, and that association was between persons who use inhibition lowering drugs (including alcohol) and violence. Drug users were twice as likely to commit violence than non-drug users whether or not the non-users were mentally well.

Another finding of these studies is that the mentally ill are more vulnerable to being victims of violence than the mentally well.

Bottom line is, that severe mentally illness (i.e schizophrenics) is not a reliable or significant predictor of violent behavior.

[HereSince1628]

4. A link to information about violence and the mentally ill

http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/violence-statistics.html

[rurallib]

6. Thank you. Always good to learn something.

[Turbineguy]

7. "Severely mentally ill individuals

who are NOT taking their medication ARE more dangerous than the general population."

OK. So now the republicans know who to arm.

[HereSince1628]

9. This article posts the strongest indictment I could find

against the mentally ill that is based on published evidence. I posted a site that is actually maximally critical of my position.

I could have gone with this link:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jaOfkg416WEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA14&dq=violence+and+mental+illness&ots=8BKkluWymL&sig=A4PC8ITkNfFk8mhzOsl4NAlozaw#v=onepage&q=violence%20and%20mental%20illness&f=false


The website I linked to still finds that use of inhibition lowering drugs is MORE a predictor than mental illness, even among severely mentally ill.

If you compare methodologies across the various studies sited in both places you'll see reasons why the results come out with similar patterns of risk but different percentages, particualarly for the risk of violence among the mentally well.


But, going back to the original concern about mental illness and gun violence...downsizing the Milwaukee County Mental Health facility short-changes the mentally ill, but isn't going to put a lot of dangerous people on the street. Persons placed in the facility are usually there for short terms and by far the reason they are there is for being risks to themselves either because of low global functioning or as a consequence of suicidal depression and self-harming behavior associated with various Axis II disorders.

[HereSince1628]

5. Safety within the existing In-Patient facility has been criticized

I'm not really surprised about the turn to community-based treatment.

Budgets are tight, cutting a budget by about 40% helps the near-term budgeting.

Reducing the patient population could be seen as an arithmetic solution to the problem of violations of safety within the facility.

Community based also means some privatizing the care...consistent with current GOP goals and objectives

[madrchsod]

8. a huge step in the right direction

my wife works for a private/state funded company that takes care of many levels of mentally /psychically handicapped people. our town used to have a huge mentally /psychically handicapped state run facility that was by the sheer number of people...horrible.the facility is now a prison.the prison is far more problematic to the community than wre the m/p people.

home based facilities have different and similar problems as a large inclusive system . proper staffing and oversight is the key to success.