Feb. 10, 2003
In the midst of community protests against school consolidation, proposals and counter-proposals about how to meet the court’s mandate for equitable distribution of educational funds, one certainty remains: Every child will have a school desk … somewhere. It may not be exactly where they or their parents want the desk to be, but every family knows that their child will have access to 12 years of education ñ after all the 14th article of the Arkansas Constitution says that the children of the state will be educated.
The state constitution also states in the 19th article that it is the duty of the General Assembly to provide support of institutions 浻or the treatment of the insane” However, the families of loved ones with a severe mental illness do not live with the certainty that their loved one will be able to access treatment. Not with the loss of 70 percent of the state’s in-patient psychiatric hospital beds in the past 18 months, according to Kenny Whitlock, vice president of the Mental Health Council of Arkansas. Not with the $2.5 million for community mental health programs cut last year from the state budget. Since the last Arkansas legislative session, both education and services for the mentally ill have undergone the scrutiny of the courts. Both failed to pass muster. Both problems must be addressed in this legislative session. Last week former state Rep. Jerry Hunton, now a Washington County judge, sent each state legislator a letter urging the lawmakers to make mental health funding a priority even in the face of education funding demands. “I believe this is the right thing to do for the mentally ill people to get the care they need locally,” Hunton said in his letter. He said it would help ease access to the state hospital as well as help courts and law enforcement.
No one is worried about their child being deprived of an education. Families of the mentally ill wish the same were true for the needs of their loved ones who suffer a mental illness.
The state simply does not have enough psychiatric beds. The state hospital has at least a three-month waiting list. Recently a Union County inmate/would-be patient was released, untreated, still ill, from jail after waiting more than five months for court-ordered evaluation and treatment of mental illness, according to Darryl Easter, Union County jail administrator.
Arkansas is fast losing ground as financially strapped institutions have discontinued programs and cut back services to the mentally ill. 浣amilies are suffering needlessly,” said Dr. David Williams, director of the Ozark Guidance Center in Springdale. He suggested that legislators provide $11.5 million (spread out over two years) for immediate local, acute psychiatric care. He also requested that legislators restore the $2.5 million cut last year and include mental health services in an expanded Medicaid program for adults who live at or below the poverty level.
Busloads of school children have stormed the state capitol to protest the possibility of consolidating up to 60 percent of the schools, while retaining a desk for every student. Where is the outrage that 70 percent of the in-patient beds for the mentally ill disappeared in less than two years? Hunton is right, mental health issues need to be a priority this legislative session, even if it means that school children, their families and communities have to wait a while for their school to be consolidated. (Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)