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FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT FINDS ALABAMA

A LEADER IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) – An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, finds that Alabama is a pioneer in the field of mental health care. The report touts Alabama’s creation of regional mental health teams in rural areas where the state is closing psychiatric hospitals. It appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

“Deinstitutionalization has failed in many parts of the country because states have failed to build their community-based mental health systems to adequately support people with mental illness,” says Michele Mariani, co-author of the special issue of Governing. “Alabama should be commended for its foresight in leaving teams of specialists in areas that used to be served by hospitals and would have been seriously underserved otherwise.”

Last December, Alabama completed the terms of the nation’s longest-running mental health lawsuit, Wyatt v. Stickney, which was a 1970 class-action case brought by mentally ill residents who had been committed to state hospitals. The changes implemented in the state’s mental health system to comply with Wyatt and the continued movement of mentally ill residents from hospitals to the community have led to a substantial drop in the number of Alabama’s state hospital patients--from 8,000 in 1970 to about 1,500 today.

As a result, the state is closing six of its 14 state hospitals. Governing’s report notes that the creation of four regional mental health teams shows the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation’s commitment to ease fears that rural areas could be left without crucial resources. The teams include physicians, nurses, psychiatrists and other specialists.

The authors also praise Alabama for addressing a critical need for short-term inpatient hospital beds by adding 40 acute-care beds, split between two of the remaining state psychiatric hospitals.

Governing’s analysis of state-funded health care is part of the Government Performance Project, a six-year-old effort, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to evaluate a wide range of state government management and policy functions. This year’s special report focuses on six critical health care problems facing states: long-term care, public health, mental health, prescription drugs, access to care for the uninsured, and care for children.

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ health care system to deliver improvements in medicine fairly and consistently to many of their citizens. Health care in most states is not just inadequate, the study concluded--it’s deteriorating. “After exhaustive analysis and hundreds of interviews,” says Peter Harkness, Governing’s publisher and editor, “it became clear that there is a health care crisis in America. But it is in no way a medical crisis. It is a fiscal crisis.”

Governing is a policy and management magazine aimed at high-level state and local government officials. An online version of this report will be available at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm as of January 29. Press releases for each of the 50 states can be found at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/press.htm.

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