Steve Holland takes on In-patient care
“We, by design, created a heavy institutional mental health system in the state of Mississippi starting some twenty-five to thirty years ago,” State Representative Steve Holland explains. “You can go back as far as to 1886 when the state hospital at Whitfield was first created.”
While others were changing their approach, Mississippi became dependent on in-patient care. Some say the state made the system too easy and too costly. But now, after the National Alliance on Mental Health gave the state an ‘F’ for it’s mental health system, Holland and some other state officials are catching on.
“Community care; number one is much more economical. Number two, it’s closer to home so you main stream folks with mental illness, which is what you want to do,” Holland says. “You don’t do one to the determinant of the other.”
It’s an issue a legislative study panel is tackling head-on.
“The fact of the matter is seven-eighths of our population can be mainstreamed in the communities where they live, where they’re born, where their families are with a good level of medication, case management, out patient therapy, day-hab centers, that kind of thing – basically through our regional community health system,” Holland, who is co-chairing the panel, explains.
WCBI
9/28/9
Magnolia Tribune
