The Reason for the Big Push for a Georgia Mental Health Bill
in 2010 Georgia agreed to release mentally ill patients into the community
Why has dealing with the mentally ill become such an issue before the General Assembly the last couple of years? Consider the following:
1. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint against the state of Georgia for violating the Americans with Disability Act.
(https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/01/10/US_v_Georgia_ADAsettle_10-19-10.pdf (page 1, section I, letters A-C).
2. In October of 2010, the State of Georgia came to a settlement with President Obama’s Department of Justice. The DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs announced that this agreement would, “Transform the State of Georgia's mental health and developmental disability system.”
3. By July of 2011, the state of Georgia agreed to stop all State Hospital admissions of individuals with a primary diagnosis of a developmental disability (read the definition in the settlement) and started releasing individuals from the State Hospitals.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/01/10/US_v_Georgia_ADAsettle_10-19-10.pdf ( page 5, number 1, section a)
In January 2010, the Central State Hospital in Milledgeville is downsized.
From 2011-2015 Georgia was given a specific number of individuals they must release from the State Hospitals. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/01/10/US_v_Georgia_ADAsettle_10-19-10.pdf (page 6, letters A-F)
Under this agreement, those released must be provided state and federal subsidies for community housing, medical, education, transportation, nutrition, and other services.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/01/10/US_v_Georgia_ADAsettle_10-19-10.pdf (page 5-10, section III, number 2)
4. The 2010 settlement required Georgia to provide housing to an estimated 9,000 people with serious mental illness and a “forensic status” (a.k.a. criminal record). The settlement described these individuals as frequently readmitted to the state hospitals, emergency rooms and/or are chronically homeless being released from jails or prisons. (page 11, section B, number 1)
5. These estimated 9,000 people (in 2010) were required to receive “Assertive Community Treatment (ACT).” ACT services would include case management, housing, crisis services and abuse services. These community services needed to be provided 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (page 12-13, number 2)
Questions Georgia State Senators Must Be Asking:
Did not this 13-year-old settlement with Obama’s Department of Justice essentially cripple, rather than, “transform Georgia’s Mental Health System?
Was this settlement handled appropriately through the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD), which was created to manage the 2010 DOJ Settlement?
Why does Georgia need HB-520 that creates more studies and bureaucracy when an entire department was created in 2010 to manage the Georgia mental health system?
Did Georgia create the “familiar faces” problem by shutting down its own resources beginning in 2011? If so, the government is merely creating the problem and offering a “solution.”
Knowing all this, and knowing that a need would soon result requiring the monitoring of released mental patients, did sponsors of this bill devise a plan to profit from the required monitoring portion of the 2010 DOJ Settlement and HB-520?
https://hanksullivan.substack.com/p/conflicts-of-interest-hb-520-unnamed
These questions must be answered BEFORE HB520 is passed into law.
In short, the State of Georgia got sued by the USA, because Georgia is not following Socialist agendas from the Swamp. However, rather than stand up for the Citizens of Georgia or paying millions of dollars in Attorney fees to support our rights supported in the US Constitution, they used our Tax Dollars to create a Board that does very little toward helping those afflicted with Mental Illness (10+ years worth). A solution is out there somewhere and it does involve money. How many more street people and mentally ill are we still watching struggle?
Efforts dealing with Mental Health problems cost money. Few families afford this situation easily and many afflicted have no family to appeal.
Identifying our current costs of handling these publicly misunderstood disorders should give us some ideal of the amount of productivity we might save. This number might provide some dimension to the affordable effort at hand. To date organized efforts to aid these publicly afflicted individuals has been noneffective when turned over to Government control or anyone else at present and that is likely not to change.
Coming up with the a complex solution is not likely to exist in a new Government developed program due to costs built-in for supporting.
If all those benefiting from removal of the issues cause by the public exposure to Mental Illness issues, a funding might be developed that might be plausible. For that case families have benefits to their aid as well. So what is it worth.
Economics seems to be more of a driver that what is good for your fellow citizen, that is why this perspective is taken. So what amount today is spent on police time, emergency services, hospital time, sanitation, housing, hospital bed space and vehicle accidents to name a few.
A real effort to come up with solutions that most would understand is a very complex formula and Boards and Conferences with minutes and dinners don't accomplish much! There are a many things that are working in the Mental Health Services arena, we would be wise to listen before presenting a solution. However, they are not the solution to the problem because here again each situation is different and currently there is a treatment not necessarily a healing. Alcoholics and Drug addicts are not necessarily Mentally Ill, but many Mentally Ill are either or both.
Citizens need to step forward that are capable of taking on the task of research and development of a system for helping those that can't help themselves that will work for what we know today and change as necessary for what we might learn tomorrow.
The complexity of treating Mental Illness deals with few definitions the average person comprehends, mostly because the healing is not present or confirmed. Just as in most medical situations they speak a different language. A public solution will we understood by all except maybe the worst afflicted.
Thanks Hank for asking all the right questions.
This bill sounds like it was written by Democrats. I can't believe Republicans supported it.
It's total over reach and goes against the Republican idea of "individual rights".