The Mental Health Crisis Within the Mental Health Crisis Drew Altman

https://www.kff.org/from-drew-altman/the-mental-health-crisis-within-the-mental-health-crisis/ I remember meeting one evening many years ago with families of patients in one of our largest state psychiatric hospitals when I was Human Services Commissioner in New Jersey. I expected to see maybe 10 or 20 family members there that night, but hundreds came to express their frustration and outrage that more was not being done for their spouse, parent, child, or relative who was a patient there. They were concerned about the quality of care in the hospital and about the conditions in the facility, drug use, and safety. They were right to be worried. The facilities were old and badly understaffed, many of the patients were dumped there from the correctional system, which could not handle them or did not want to, about 70% of the patients had a substance use issue complicating chronic mental illness, and the psychiatric care provided to them was inadequate, to be kind. The families’ anguish was palpable and understandable. Many were in tears.