What has Not Worked

Right now I found some articles about reform failures in the United States (in particularly North Carolina). Millions have been spent on slip-shod attempts at reform, ending in monetary abuse of power and funds.

This is an exerpt:

Harold Carmel, president of the N.C. Psychiatric Association, holds the Easley administration responsible.
"The devil was in the details," Carmel said in an interview. "And they didn't think through all the details. They were overwhelmed by the task. They still are."

The fact is that most reforms only focus on one area. In the North Carolina case, it was a problem with pleasing providers who were in it for profit, not reform.

Real reform begins with REAL care...care in ALL aspects of every position. The staff, the environment, the community, etc. all need to be working for the right reasons.

In another article, entitled The New Freedom Commission Report, it is clear that money will always be an issue when it comes to reform.

Today, with fewer than 57,000 state hospital beds across the country, we have a decentralized "system" in which persons with mental illnesses must rely on multiple and uncoordinated service agencies to meet basic human needs with treatments and services that are essential to their recovery. Meanwhile, the capacity of state mental health agencies to finance and manage mental health services has eroded. Over the past 20 years, per capita spending by state mental health agencies has declined by nearly 10 percent (1). Even the explosive growth in Medicaid is deceptive, because greater amounts of state mental health agencies' budgets are diverted to cover the state Medicaid match, leaving fewer dollars to be managed by the agencies themselves.

Basically the report talks about how funding and budgeting are getting spread thin across too many agencies. Money always tends to be at the root of the issue. Sad isn't it?

Alright y'all,

more to come!

-H