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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowRepublican leaders seemed optimistic they could secure more funding for mental health during the 2023 budget-writing session, despite the numerous priorities warring for monies from the state’s healthy surplus.
“I don’t think (Hoosiers) should be worried and I’m not being cavalier about this,” Gov. Eric Holcomb said Friday about mental health funding. “Will we be able to do everything we want to do? We’re never able to do everything we wanted to do but this is a priority.”
Holcomb appeared alongside legislative and judicial leaders Friday at the first Indiana Mental Health Summit designed to bring stakeholders together and discuss solutions to Indiana’s deficit of mental and behavioral health services. Nearly 1,000 stakeholders attended the event.
The event, hosted by the Indiana Supreme Court, examines how courts, jails and community leaders can work together to reduce the number of Hoosiers with mental illnesses in the criminal justice system by providing earlier interventions and treatment.
Even though an estimated one in five Hoosiers lives with a mental illness, roughly 20% receive no treatment.
“Most people, when they think about mental health, think about treatment centers first … but we know that our jails and criminal justice systems are the largest providers,” House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, said. “That has to change.”
Huston said Rep. Greg Steuerwald, R-Avon, would carry a bill in the upcoming year to address funding for mental health.
Shoring up Indiana’s 988 system
A lynchpin to reforming Indiana’s mental health system is the 988 hotline, designed to be a mental health crisis equivalent to 911 that launched this summer.
A report from the Indiana Behavioral Health Commission concluded last month that the system needed dedicated, long-term funding and recommended instituting a $1 per month surcharge on phone bills, similar to the 911 surcharge Hoosiers already pay.
The system relies on three pillars of support: having someone to answer the 988 hotline, someone to respond to the crisis in the field, and a place to go if someone is in a severe crisis and requires immediate assistance.
On Monday, Sen. Pro Tem Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, will meet with other Morgan County leaders to discuss establishing a mobile crisis response unit, which would respond to those calls for help.
Bray said lawmakers aren’t mandating other counties follow suit, but hope others will voluntarily create their own teams once they see it in action.
“We need to show that it’s working and tell that story and communicate that to other folks,” Bray said. “That’s really helpful. I’m not sure it’s anything we want mandated at this point.”
But Bray said the General Assembly needed to acknowledge the end goal: building out 988 to be a fully responsive system like its 911 counterpart.
“We’re going to have somebody come out if it’s necessary, come out and assist you just like 911 does if you have a stroke. I don’t know if we’ll get there by April, but it has to be the goal,” Bray said. “It’s going to need some funding, there’s no doubt about that – whether it’s going to be a dollar or something else. That’s all part of the budget process that we’ll work through.”
Holcomb said that investment in mental health was needed and that the absence of a system cost Hoosiers in the long run. The Behavioral Health Commission estimated that untreated mental illnesses in Indiana cost the state $4.2 billion annually.
“(It’s) so critical that people have access to the service that they need when they need them,” Holcomb said. “Oftentimes, that’s a miracle.”
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, not-for-profit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
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How about starting with getting these mentally ill homeless people off of our streets?
You got to want to be helped.
The Star has a pretty good article on the topic this morning.
Maybe this would have been a better investment than a inflation-causing billion dollar taxpayer “refund” whose primary purpose was to fool Indiana voters into sending the same legislators back to the Statehouse yet again.
(sarcasm) Isn’t this something like socialism? Giving money to help people that can afford to them help themselves? (end sarcasm)
Any increase in mental health spending has got to be good for the whole state.
Dan, you expect those that lack insight into their serious mental illness and possible co occurring SUD to think they need help? There are those who need intervention.
Should have used, at least part of it, the “tax refund” we just received for Mental Health, Drug/Alcohol Abuse, Shelters for moms and families.
For those who believe this is just about just sending money to those who need it, you are wrong.
It’s about funding for the people who do the work to help people recover from addiction, depression, anxiety, and other debilitating illnesses that prevent you from being a productive member of society. Illnesses that a lot of people don’t have the money to pay to treat.
I deem this a valid allocation of taxpayer dollars because a 100% capitalistic healthcare system (especially for mental health) would not do much to treat the large swath of the population suffering from it.
That’s my two cents on a complex problem.
Amen Donnie