Mental health professionals from Cedar Rapids are telling lawmakers that the governor’s plan to close two of the four state-run Mental Health Institutes is “terrifying.”
Kent Jackson, the administrative director for behavioral services at UnityPoint in Cedar Rapids, says he doesn’t know where patients who would otherwise be sent to the M-H-Is in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant will go. Jackson says the psychiatric units at most Iowa hospitals are nearly always full, and the governor’s plan means mentally ill patients will wind up “boarding” in emergency rooms for “days” while administrators search for a space for them.
Jackson is asking legislators and the governor to think about how they’d want a member of their own family treated if they’re diagnosed with a mental illness.
Jackson’s comments provided courtesy of The Cedar Rapids Gazette. And Dr. Al Whitters, the medical director at Mercy Center Behavioral Services in Cedar Rapids, says a residential program at the M-H-I in Mount Pleasant that caters to people with both psychiatric AND substance abuse issues…so-called dual diagnoses…is crucial.
Whitters and Jackson testified Wednesday before the Iowa Senate Human Resources Committee. While the governor’s budget outline for the next state fiscal year includes no money for the Mental Health Institutes at Clarinda and Mount Pleasant, lawmakers say the shut-down is already underway because patients are no longer being accepted at the facilities.
