Mental health dialogue needs to be more open, Wichita-area advocates say
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BY RON SYLVESTER
The Wichita Eagle
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GETTING HELP
Community resources for people suffering from mental illness and their families:
Comcare Crisis Hotline: 316-660-7500. Answered 24 hours
Other emergencies: 911 — ask for an CIT-trained officer (crisis intervention training).
NAMI/Wichita: (316) 686-1373 Offers peer-to-peer classes for the mentally ill, support for families and other resources.
Mental Health Association of South Central Kansas (316) 685-1821. Provides a counseling center, education and advocacy for treatment.
Breakthrough Club: (316) 269-2534. A non-profit, community to help people living with severe mental illness live independently.
Mental Health First-Aid: Comcare offers a program to help people deal with mental health emergencies before they can get professional help and support. The next course is scheduled for April 21-22. Call 660-7525.
Center for Community Support and Research, Wichita State: Offers services designed to help mental health consumers make decision and take control of their treatment. 978-3843.
HELPFUL LINKS
NAMI/Wichita (National Alliance On Mental Illness)
NAMI’s national website
NAMI Blog
Treatment Advocacy Center
Mental Health Association of South Central Kansas
Comcare of Sedgwick County
Center for Community Support and Research, Wichita State
Pat Deegan’s Common Ground: web-based help for people with mental illness
Nancy Jensen cringed as she watched from Wichita the unfolding story last week of the deadly shooting rampage in Arizona.
“It’s sickening,” Jensen said of speculation about the mental health of the suspected gunman, Jared L. Loughner. “No one wanted to talk about what it really was — an assassination attempt. All of the sudden it’s about mental illness.”
Jensen has lived with mental illness all of her adult life. She knows people like her are far more likely to suffer violence than hurt others.
“For every person like myself, who lives with mental illness, these kinds of situations make it even more of a stigma,” Jensen said. “It makes you wonder what people think of you…”
But mental health care leaders also say the tragedy in Tucson, which left six people dead and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords fighting for her life, highlights a system struggling to serve those who need it.
Services overwhelmed
Community mental health services in the Wichita area are overwhelmed by severe budget cuts and increasing demand, officials say.
Comcare, Sedgwick County’s mental health agency, has seen its funds cut by nearly two-thirds — from $4.9 million in 2006 to $1.9 million last year.
“These short-term cuts are long-term stupidity,” said Gerry Lichti, president of Wichita’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“We would not think about not treating people with diabetes who are in crisis, or heart disease…” Lichti said.
“But the persons with mental illness are left without access and — unless they have advocates working for them — it’s a disaster.”
Still, more people each year are seeking help — some in the midst of emergencies.
“We’re still able to serve and help people, but our resources are strained,” said Jason Scheck, director of Comcare’s crisis intervention services.
About one in four Americans suffers some kind of mental illness, according to NAMI. One in six has a serious condition such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
Mentally ill people are 11 times more likely to be victims of violence than to be perpetrators, according to researchers at Northwestern University.
Treatment cuts the risks of both, Lichti said.
“Treatment works,” Lichti said. “If one can access treatment, then those folks are no more apt to do violence than the rest of the population.”
Without treatment
Scott Roeder had bouts of mental illness, and his family said he avoided treatment for years before he killed Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.
An estimated two of every five people suffering from mental illness are not receiving treatment on any given day, said the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit group based in Arlington Va., run by psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey.
Less treatment means an increased risk of violence, suicide, abuse and homelessness, the group said.
Jensen, the Wichita woman, knows how difficult it can be to find and maintain proper treatment.
With a shortage of treatment centers and housing in the late 1980s, Jensen ended up as one of the residents at the Kaufman House in Newton.
For years, Arlan and Linda Kaufman operated a group home where, authorities later learned, residents who suffered from severe mental diseases were abused. The couple is now in federal prison, but Jensen’s emotional scars remain.
“There is violence inside the system, where people are restrained and put in seclusion,” Jensen said.
People with mental illness are eight times more likely to be robbed, 15 times more likely to be assaulted and 23 times more likely to be raped than the general population, said psychiatric researchers at the Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
But Jensen said she rarely hears about that on the news.
“But when something horrible like this happens, people talk about mental illness,” Jensen said. “When domestic violence happens, you don’t talk about mental illness.”
Jensen is a certified peer specialist, who works counseling other mentally ill people. Jensen also trains others through the Center for Community Support and Research at Wichita State University.
“We need to have a voice inside the system because we’re the ones who live it,” Jensen said.
Prison, not hospital
In reality, research shows, the mentally ill face punishment more than help.
People with mental illness are three times more likely to end up in jail or in prison than in a hospital. That’s according to a study released last spring by Treatment Advocacy Center of Washington, D.C., and the National Sheriffs’ Association.
Wichita has tried to fix that problem by putting 198 police and sheriffs’ officers through crisis intervention training the past two years. The program teaches police how to recognize a mentally ill person in crisis and how to help them find treatment and avoid jail.
The city also runs a mental health court, which offers alternatives to jail.
It’s helping, Comcare’s Scheck said, but it has kept the Sedgwick County Offender Assessment Program (SCOPE) near capacity all year.
“If we’re going to continue to grow, we’ll need additional resources,” said Scheck, who also manages SCOPE.
Later this month, the county’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council will consider adding a mental health unit to the jail and hiring two case workers and a therapist, Scheck said.
Comcare is also asking the county for a crisis stabilization unit — a one-stop resource for consumers of mental health services.
The center would provide short-term, in-patient beds, walk-in evaluations, case workers, family counselors and peer specialists.
“That is something that is much needed in our community,” Jensen said.
Helping hands
It will take a community effort to help improve access to treatment and reduce barriers for the mentally ill, advocates say.
Jensen said family members, classmates and neighbors who notice strange behavior should offer help.
As Jensen watched the coverage of the Arizona shooting, she heard the wrong questions being asked about Loughner.
“You hear a lot of people saying something was wrong with him, but no one is asking why no one helped this person,” Jensen said.
“If someone had stepped in and gone with him to get an evaluation, it might have made getting treatment easier,” she added. “It might have erased some of the stigma of being mentally ill.”
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