Ohio's Community Mental Health System at a Crossroads

According to the Cleveland based Center for Community Solutions, a think tank dedicated to providing strategic leadership in the areas of health, social, and economic conditions, Ohio's mental health system is collapsing due to a lack of investment over many years. This lack of investment is leading to high costs in other systems and poor health outcomes.



Funding Cuts Cost More

According to Susan Ackerman, Fellow, Public Policy and Advocacy at the Center, Ohio's community mental health system is on the brink of failure and collapse. A combination of factors over time has led to this situation. But, among these factors, the lack of funding is the most damaging. Failure to meet the needs of people with mental illness in a community setting has resulted in increased hospitalizations, nursing home placements, and incarceration. Not only are these alternatives inappropriate - and in many cases inhumane - but they are significantly more expensive.


Though Ohio faces a crushing state revenue shortfall, more spending is needed now to stabilize the communty mental health system. This would not only improve the care of individuals with mental illness but would be prudent fiscal policy as it would stave off the need for future spending in other systems that are ill-equipped to provide long-term treatment and stabilization for people with mental illness.

ADAMHS Boards Worked!

The funding structure that initially created Ohio's Alcohol, Drug Addiction, and Mental Health Services Boards was initially very effective at deinstitutionalizastion, reducing the number of state hospitals from 17 to 7 representing better care in community settings and massive institutional cost savings. However, now that those savings have been realized it is important that funding levels be tied to cost drivers in the community mental health system - caseload, price, and service utilization.

Have we returned to the 1840's?

Around the country, care for people with severe mental illness is reverting to something that resembles the system that existed when Dorothea Dix began her raids on jails and almshouses in the 1840's. Ohio has the chance to reverse it current course, by leveraging the changes that resutl from federal health reform and actively design a system that will improve the health of our citizens. Nowhere else is it more important to seize this opportunity right now than in the behavioral health system.

Mike Schoenhofer