By Susan Bromley

Staff Writer

(Editor’s Note: This is part two of a 2-part story. Part one can be found at thecitizenonline.com)

Bob and Judy McReavy were up north on vacation thinking everything was fine as it had been for the past dozen years, but returned to find their son had been left without mental health treatment for three months and had regressed 75 percent.

A director of the program told the McReavys the program had not been able to hire enough staff and their son “kind of got left out.”

“At the end of (2013) they dumped the program and put 30 recipients to the street, including our son,” she said.

They got him into another program run by Macomb County, but one without portable supports. It is a 9-5, 5 days a week program. He struggled to adjust and was also diagnosed with diabetes.

For the past few years he had been in and out of the hospital and this past summer, his mental and physical health landed him in the hospital again, where he nearly died. When he recovered enough physically, the hospital wanted to release him, but the McReavys said their son’s apartment was infested with bedbugs.

A judge ultimately told them their son would be released, either to a shelter, a motel, or to his parents.

They brought him home to live with them.

“He doesn’t want to live with us and we don’t want him to live with us, we are all three of us in a house in chaos,” said Judy. “What would help is having any caring person show up at these public hearings we are having to let the governor, legislators and candidates know how bad it is, and why it is so bad and how to fix it. We can fix it by putting funds back in system we have that is already set up, so they are able to hire personnel they need to help people who are disabled. It’s not rocket science, it’s a matter of where you want to put your money. The most important things you have to provide for disabled people are housing, food, transportation, and medications.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mental illness is defined as “health conditions that are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior (or some combination thereof) associated with distress and/or impaired functioning. Depression is the most common type of mental illness, affecting more than 26 percent of the U.S. adult population. It has been estimated that by the year 2020, depression will be the second leading cause of disability throughout the world, trailing only ischemic heart disease.”

Mental illness has dire social impacts. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an estimated 26 percent of homeless adults staying in shelters live with serious mental illness and approximately 20 percent of state prisoners and 21 percent of local jail prisoners have “a recent history” of a mental health condition. Seventy percent of youth in juvenile justice systems have at least one mental health condition and at least 20 percent live with a serious mental illness.

Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Greg Glover, Brandon substation commander, said he and his deputies go out on many calls involving people with mental conditions.

“When they are on their medications, they function fine, but when they stop taking them, it becomes an issue,” he said. “In our line of work, the mentally ill tend to be some of the most violent people we deal with. They’re not a criminal per se, but because of their state of mind, it becomes a criminal issue. People are afraid of them, they become violent, destroy property, tear homes up and the people caring for them can’t deal with it and call 9-1-1 and now it becomes a police issue.”

He recalls his first call as a young patrol officer was with a 16-year-old boy with bi-polar disorder who assaulted his mother and grandmother. The teen pulled a knife on police and nearly lost his life because of it. Years later, last fall, Glover faced a similar incident here when deputies responded to a home on Mill Street for a domestic situation in which a man with schizophrenia was threatening suicide. Deputies were confronted by the man armed with a cocked and loaded crossbow. The situation was successfully resolved when a Taser was deployed to disarm the subject, but could easily have ended much differently. The man recently returned to the substation after getting out of jail to thank deputies for not killing him.

“I told him he was very lucky,” said Glover, who adds that many people with mental health issues are released to group homes that are not equipped to handle mental illness. “It’s incredible how many people are diagnosed with mental illness. He was very lucky. I told him to keep taking his medicine.”

The CDC defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community. It is estimated that only about 17 percent of U.S adults are considered to be in a state of optimal mental health.”

The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that approximately one in five adults in the U.S.—43.8 million, or 18.5%—experience mental illness in a given year and about 10 million adults in the U.S. per year experience a serious mental illness which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.

Only 41 percent of adults in the U.S. with a mental health condition received mental health services in the past year, according to NAMI and only 62.9 percent of those with a serious mental illness received mental health services.

The Oakland County Community Mental Health Authority serves 25,000 people per year through a provider network, including those with intellectual/developmental disabilities, adults with mental illness, children with serious emotional disturbance, and persons with substance abuse disorders. The organization manages a $300 million budget and most of the clients using services receive Medicaid and Social Security disability benefits.

Christine Burk, manager of communications and community outreach, said the OCMHA does many activities to connect people to services and screeners determine eligibility for services for people in crisis situations.

“Any time there is a reduction in the budget, we have to make adjustments and we try to do that without impacting quality of life for people, but overall our system in Oakland County is a highly regarded system,” said Burk. “We have infrastructure in place for services.”

However, OCMHA lost funding in 2010 through a process called rebasing, when Medicare dollars were reduced and given to smaller communities. The problem, said Burk, is that those smaller cities didn’t have the infrastructure to use the funding, which then had to be given back to the state. In a five-year timeframe, $300 million was returned to the state coffers, while Burk and her colleagues pleaded with the state to return funds to the tri-county area where more than 60 percent of those in the state receiving mental health services reside. The discussions continue, but now Burk and the McReavys, as well as many others are concerned by talk of privatization of mental health services by state legislators and Gov. Rick Snyder.

“Public mental health decisions are driven by service delivery for people and their needs and the benefits to them,” Burk said. “And private mental health services are driven by profit and saving dollars in the service model. There’s a big difference there. We provide services private companies don’t, we talk about employment, housing, transportation, education— we look at the whole person and their quality of life in the community.”

Public mental health services, she explains, help people living with lifelong disabilities and she feels she has to keep reminding political leaders why the public mental health system was established by President John F. Kennedy through his signing of the Community Mental Health Act in 1963.

The goal of the act was to provide grants to states to build mental health centers for community-based care, as opposed to institutionalization, recognizing that integrating people with mental illness into the community was a far better strategy to help them live their lives.

Fred Cummins, president of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Oakland County, said with budget cuts, the mental health system is not doing well and he fears privatization in particular.

“This is a bad situation getting worse,” said Cummins, who has a mentally ill daughter who is approaching 50-years-old, has been mentally ill since the age of 17, needs 24-hour care and lives with her parents since suffering a head injury three years ago. “It started with a fundamental problem— a system crumbling with budget cuts and limited funds. If we were to move the money into HMOs, there is no reason to believe they can do better providing services. Private companies are not motivated to provide services in the best interest of citizens, but those of their stakeholders.”

What he is looking for is funds allocated to specific mental health line items in the state budget as currently, the legislature approves a general amount to mental health without knowing specifically what they are voting on.

“The administration has what is important to them and mental health doesn’t seem to be a large concern like roads, Flint water and Detroit schools,” said Cummins. “They are not particularly interested in making the case for mental health services. We have to get to where the legislature accepts that they are a governing body for the mental health system, they represent the citizens of the state, their interests, what the services are and how well-funded they are. If we aren’t going to fund everything, what specific things aren’t being funded? There needs to be a measurement of what the need is and an objective assessment.”

Cummins has helped organize mental health town hall meetings addressing concerns regarding proper funding of mental health services and opposing privatization of such services. The next meeting will take place at 7 p.m., Sept. 28, in Macomb County at the Intermediate School District, 44001 Garfield, Clinton Township.

“When you can run state deficit up to $4.2 billion, giving tax breaks to corporations and you can’t provide basic services because you gave money away, something is wrong with system,” said Bob. “We have to win the battle, so we can fight the war for the next 30 years of trying to improve mental health and make them change policies. If we don’t fix this before we die, our son is going to end up sleeping in a cardboard box.”