News Release

NCD #03-421
July 11, 2003
Contact: Mark S. Quigley
202-272-2004
202-272-2074 TTY
mquigley@ncd.gov

National Council on Disability Applauds Presidential Mental Health Report

WASHINGTON-The National Council on Disability (NCD) commends the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health report on the status of America's mental health system. The Commission's report concluded that the nation's mental health system was broken and in need of immediate attention. Among a number of recommendations, the report emphasizes early intervention, ongoing supports and services for people with mental illness, and a recovery-oriented frame of reference.

NCD's 2002 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, reached these same conclusions.

NCD's report examined 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. The report was intended to provide an overview and was not a comprehensive review of all that is known about the public mental health system and its shortcomings. That undertaking was begun by the U.S. Surgeon General, in the massive 1999 report entitled Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/home.html), and was carried on with President Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.

One of the most significant findings of NCD's 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 requires 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 effective models that support this vision and that are consistent with Olmstead and President Bush's New Freedom Initiative.