News Feature

NCD #02-387
September 16, 2002
Contact: Mark S. Quigley
202-272-2004
202-272-2074 TTY
mquigley@ncd.gov

National Council on Disability Says Mental Health System in Crisis: Calls for Fundamental Reform

WASHINGTON--The National Council on Disability (NCD) today released its report The Well Being of our Nation: An Inter-Generational Vision of Effective Mental Health Services and Supports (http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/mentalhealth.html), calling for fundamental reform in a mental health system in crisis.

This report examines some of the root causes of the crisis in mental health, and seeks to "connect the dots" concerning the dysfunction of a number of public systems that are charged with providing mental health services and supports for children, youth, adults and seniors who have been diagnosed with mental illnesses. This report is intended to provide an overview and is not a comprehensive review of all that is known about the public mental health system and its shortcomings. That undertaking has been begun by the U.S. Surgeon General, in the massive 1999 report entitled Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, and will be carried on with President Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which held its first public hearings in July 2002.

One of the most significant findings of this report is that children and youth who experience dysfunction at the hands of mental health and educational systems are much more likely to become dependent on failing systems that are supposed to serve adults. In parallel fashion, adults whose mental health service and support needs are not fulfilled are very likely to become seniors who are dependent on failing public systems of care. In this fashion, hundreds of thousands of children, youth, adults and seniors experience poor services and poor life outcomes, literally from cradle to grave.

The mental health system in this country is in crisis. For decades, state mental health systems have been burdened with ineffective service-delivery programs and stagnant bureaucracies.

There is no single antidote for the current dysfunction of the public mental health system. Clearly, visionary leadership, adequate funding and expansion of proven models (including consumer-directed programs) are essential ingredients. More than these, however, there needs to be a dramatic shift in aspirations for people with psychiatric disabilities.

What is most needed now is a dramatically new vision of what people with psychiatric disabilities can achieve, if given the supports they need to succeed. That vision must start with the premise that recovery is possible and ought to be seen as an objective for every person with a psychiatric disability. The vision must also incorporate the principles of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Supreme Court's Olmstead decision. A final component of this new vision will require a commitment to fund effective supports and services and to fund enforcement of the rights guaranteed under ADA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Medicaid, and other federal statutes.

The Federal Government can play an important role in establishing funding and other incentives for state mental health systems to adopt new models that support this vision and that are consistent with Olmstead and President Bush's New Freedom Initiative.