Mentally ill fall through the cracks
0 Comments | Kennebec Journal, Aug 30, 2010 | by RICHARDSON, JOHN
Portland Press Herald
PORTLAND — Having a mental illness and no health insurance was almost a deadly combination for Jason Cook.
Last month, homeless and unable to afford treatment for his bi-polar disorder, the 22-year-old walked to the Casco Bay Bridge.
“I got really low, really depressed,” he said. “I was going to jump off the bridge. Portland police ended up stopping me.”
Cook instead went to a hospital emergency room, a place he’d been several times before to get help with his illness.
A growing number of uninsured Mainers with mental illness are falling through the cracks of the health care system because of state budget cuts and financial strains on nonprofits, according to state officials and private agencies. Just as when someone goes without treatment for a toothache and ends up in the ER, the lack of access to regular mental health care means illnesses are getting more expensive and patients are getting sicker, officials said.
Youth Alternatives Ingraham, a nonprofit mental health agency in Portland, hopes a new two-year, $100,000 grant will help a lot of people like Cook, who has since qualified for state coverage.
“If we can provide the outpatient or community-based care, we can keep people out of ERs, out of hospitals,” said Patricia McKenzie, senior vice president at the agency.
The $100,000 grant arrived last month from the JTG Foundation, a Maine philanthropy founded by the late John T. “Tom” Gorman.
“That’s wonderful. We think it will definitely help,” said Ronald Welch, director of adult mental health services for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. “But we’ve got needs that go well beyond that, to be honest with you.”
Welch said the state historically has provided grants to private, non-profits agencies to provide community based mental health care, such as therapy and medication management.
“That amount of money has dried up significantly,” he said. Every time there is a budget curtailment, for example, money comes out of the fund used to provide those grants
individual health insurance