First, some facts. The Missouri Department of Mental Health (DMH) budget for the current fiscal year is $1,199,029,884; that’s nearly $1.2 billion. Of that total, $575,426,388 is from General Revenue (state taxes), $578,775,972 is Federal dollars, and $44,827,524 is from other sources such as state trust funds. Based on current state population, that’s $200 per person per year going to the MO DMH for facilities, personnel, administration, and rugs. Missouri will spend $466 million this fiscal year on non-Medicaid mental health treatment. For another perspective, if you drive or walk through downtown St. Louis, just count the number of homeless people sleeping on park benches or panhandling on street corners.
For the last five years, Missouri has received grants of Federal money funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), roughly $750,000 per year, and managed by a Governor-appointed committee called the Transformation Working Group.
SAMHSA is the federal agency that recently published a report falsely stating that 1 out of 5 people in the U.S. is mentally ill.
The Missouri Mental Health Transformation Working Group published its Comprehensive Plan for Mental Health, 2011 Action Plan Update on September 30, 2010. Let’s see what they did with your money:
- They incorporated a non-profit agency and appointed a board of directors.
- They sponsored a banquet for fund raising.
- They held a conference for consumers of mental health services.
- They created a new website to promote their activities.
- They trained some people on mental health in early childhood education.
- They pushed a program called Positive Behavior Support into 597 schools.
- They expanded the number of older adults eligible for mental health treatment for depression.
- They added a new Medicaid mental health billing code for Federally Qualified Health Centers.
- They worked on electronic claims reporting systems for Medicaid.
- They trained some people in Motivational Enhancement Therapy.
- They trained some people on how to access their mental health services.
- They conducted some surveys and gathered some statistics about people’s quality of life.
Are you seeing the pattern here yet? I’m going to shout it out:
NONE OF THEIR GOALS SPECIFIED IMPROVED PATIENT OUTCOMES (CURES) AND BETTER MENTAL HEALTH FOR INDIVIDUALS.
NONE OF THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS INDICATED ANY IMPROVED PATIENT OUTCOMES (CURES) OR BETTER MENTAL HEALTH FOR INDIVIDUALS.
THE ENTIRETY OF THEIR ACTIVITIES WERE FOR MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS, AND TRAINING PEOPLE ON HOW TO PUSH HARMFUL PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENTS INTO SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: the real problem, the one that this “transformation” program does not address, is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases.”
Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.
People can have problems in life; these are not, however, some mental illness caused by a deficiency of psychotropic drugs in their brains. There are workable alternatives to harmful psychiatric drugs and treatments.
Write your state and local legislators and officials now, today, and demand that funding for fraudulent and harmful psychiatric practices be stopped.