(Aug. 18, 2016) I am a psychologist and have been a Maryland state employee for the last five years. I have devoted nearly half of my life to studying severe mental illness and am committed to providing the best possible care to citizens of this state. However, efforts to provide quality mental health care in a safe environment are constantly strained by a lack of resources.
There has been a trend here in Maryland, and across the nation, to decrease the number of psychiatric beds available in state hospitals. For the last hand full of years, hospital censuses have been maxed out. Yet the wait list to get into state psychiatric hospitals has continued to grow. Individuals with mental illnesses can no longer get into inpatient psychiatric facilities for intensive services unless they have committed a crime and are court ordered to such facilities.
As a result, individuals with mental illness are being incarcerated at alarming rates. There are now ten times as many people with mental illness in jails and prisons than there are in psychiatric hospitals. These individuals languish behind bars without access to the psychiatric treatment they desperately need.
We currently have just 950 psychiatric beds in Maryland, and this number has been on a steady decline. Across the nation, there are just 11.7 available psychiatric beds for every 100,000 people with mental illness. That is the same ratio of psychiatric beds that were available to individuals with mental illness when Dorothea Dix championed mental health care reform in 1850. As a state, as a nation, we have regressed.
Increasing the number of psychiatric beds in state hospitals is not the same as promoting warehousing of people with mental illness. It's providing mental health services to individuals with mental illness in the appropriate setting. It's giving them a place to get treatment rather than waiting for them to commit a petty crime, or more tragically, commit a dangerous crime that results in incarceration and involvement in the legal system as a first step to gaining access to an inpatient hospital setting. Perhaps it is best summed up with a phrase coined by the Treatment Advocacy Center, #ABedInstead.
I ask that our current administration recognize these problems and be part of the solution. Let’s keep people with mental illnesses out of our jails. Let’s give citizens of Maryland improved access to comprehensive psychiatric treatment. Let’s bring mental health care out of the dark ages and into the 21st century.
DR. HEATHER ADAMS
MARYLAND
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