Mental health budget hike hailed

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, April 29, 2003 | 8:46 a.m.

Area nonprofits that work with mental illness said the budget increase being proposed to care for Southern Nevada's mentally ill is overdue and sorely needed.

The 2004-2005 budget being sought for Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services -- the state agency that treats mental illness in the Las Vegas Valley -- is $110 million, or 35 percent more than 2002-2003.

"This will go a long way towards meeting a lot of needs," said Carlos Brandenburg, administrator for the Nevada Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services, which oversees the Southern Nevada agency.

Nonprofit officials who wind up filling the gap left by a lack of state funding were more frank in their reaction to the proposal, which passed the Senate-Assembly budget subcommittee Monday.

"That agency was never given the budget increase to match the (valley's) population increase," said Michael Howie, director for Mojave Adult, Child and Family Services, a nonprofit that contracts with the state to treat the mentally ill.

Howie said the state's chronic shortchanging of mental health services has left its psychiatrists with unmanageable caseloads, and its patients, many of whom are homeless, require more attention than they can provide.

"These are not people who are going through a divorce and need six sessions," he said. "These are people who need intensive services."

Brian Brooks, director of a clinic that provides health care for the homeless at Nevada Health Centers, said that about half of the nearly 2,200 new patients who walk through the doors of his clinic each year suffer from mental illness in addition to the ailments that bring them to him.

He refers the patients to the state's mental health hospital, 6161 W. Charleston Blvd., for help with their mental illness, but is often thwarted in treating other problems.

"They will often not follow medical advice, so this affects our ability to heal them," Brooks said.

"Ten minutes out the office, they may look at a bottle of medicine and throw it away."

The state hospital, meanwhile, is so backed up that appointments for a person to receive any diagnosis or prescription can take from three weeks to two months, said Linda Lera-Randle El, director of Straight from the Streets, a nonprofit that works with the homeless.

Lera-Randle El also sees another result of the historical lack of funding for treating mental illness -- emergency rooms that become backed up while patients wait for a bed at the state hospital, where they can be diagnosed and treated.

She said one patient had to wait at a local emergency room for five days until a bed opened up.

Brandenburg said 32 mental health patients are in emergency rooms waiting for beds to open up in the state hospital this week.

A mobile crisis unit, the only new program bought with the money, would hire six psychiatric social workers who would be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he said. Emergency rooms could call the unit and ask for on-the-spot diagnoses. Currently, none of the 11 emergency rooms in the valley has psychiatric personnel, Brandenburg said.

In addition, the money would add to a series of existing programs -- 16 new beds for patients awaiting diagnoses, bringing the total to 26; nine new beds for patients with acute problems, bringing the total to 77; 21 new positions at the West Charleston facility to care for the patients in the added beds; and nine new positions at the four clinics around the valley where psychiatric medications are prescribed.

Brooks said that an increase in available beds may be the most important feature of the proposed budget -- "since right now there's not enough room even if patients are assessed."

At the same time, he said, the valley's growth will continue to add to the need, and the state is destined to play catch-up.

"We could have a 2,000-bed facility and fill it up today," he said.