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MHANJ Testimony on the Impact of the Proposed FY'04 Budget
on children and adult consumers
March 12, 2003
Thank you, Assemblyman Greenwald, Chairman of the Assembly Budget
Committee and members of the committee, for the opportunity to
express our opinion on Governor McGreevey’s proposed budget for
Fiscal Year 2004. My name is Marie Verna and I am the Director of
Consumer Advocacy for the Mental Health Association in New Jersey.
The mental health consumers who together form the Consumer Advocacy
Partnership in New Jersey wish to offer their support to the
legislature as they attempt to work with Governor McGreevey in
balancing the state budget.
The consumers who make up the partnership are affiliated with the
strongest consumer advocacy organizations in the state:
-
The Mental Health Association in New
Jersey
-
Collaborative Support Programs in New
Jersey
-
The Coalition of Mental Health Consumer
Organizations
-
The Consumer Provider Association in New
Jersey
Together we number in
the thousands, from all areas of the state.
Redirection II
New Jersey’s mental health consumers fully support Governor
McGreevey’s proposal to fund Redirection II in the Division of
Mental Health Services. This program, one of the most innovative in
the state’s history, has been the result of strong advocacy on our
part for many years in efforts to reform the state mental health
system from one in which consumers are institutionalized in state
hospitals to one where less expensive services are present in the
community. Our experience has been that in institutions, we rarely
recover. However in the community, with the right supports, we
thrive and recover with the help of family, friends, loved ones, and
our peers.
The Division of Mental Health Services Redirection II program has
focused significant resources toward supportive housing and other
community supports. These programs have helped hundreds of consumers
leave the hospital and return to the “least restrictive setting,”
where they have been able to stabilize, socialize, return to work,
recover, and reclaim their lives.
Many of these same people have taken advantage of training programs
offered by our member organizations that have prepared them to
become mental health providers themselves. These consumer-providers
have become integral members of treatment teams and case management
teams, such as PACT and ICMS, which Redirection II funds also
support. Consumer-providers return to the mental health system with
the unique, firsthand knowledge of what it means to manage a mental
illness. As such, they provide compassionate, supportive care to
other consumers who are attempting to recover in the community.
The Consumer Advocacy Partnership urges you to retain Redirection II
at the current proposed funding level of $10 million and to resist
proposals that would apply those state funds elsewhere.
Children’s Initiative
The Consumer Advocacy Partnership is grateful to know that Governor
McGreevey’s proposed budget includes base funding of $3 million for
the Partnership for Children (formerly called the Children’s
Initiative). This initiative has been successfully implemented in
about one-third of the state’s counties, where it has helped
families with children exhibiting mental health symptoms to “wrap
services around” their children, providing the necessary
coordination of parents, providers, teachers, and case managers.
Other states view the Partnership for Children to be an exemplary
practice model of how to confront the reality of mental illness in
children and the funding currently in Governor McGreevey’s budget
proposal will allow the program to continue rolling out throughout
the state, while also continuing to allow the state to pull down
significant federal dollars.
Again, the Consumer Advocacy Partnership strongly urges you to keep
the $3million currently in the budget proposal. Please help us to
continue to build the foundation of care for children who show signs
of the mental illness.
Medicaid Cost-Cutting
Mental health consumers who have Medicaid coverage and who are
attempting to recover in the community cannot afford some of the
cuts being proposed as ways to lower Medicaid costs. While some of
these cuts will go relatively unnoticed by some Medicaid recipients,
we believe that for those with mental illness, the cuts will create
overwhelming financial burdens.
Mental health consumers
in the community often exist on extremely tight budgets, with little
money leftover after paying for housing, food, and clothing. We all
know that our medications are an integral part of our treatment, but
when forced to choose between expensive drugs and housing or food,
many of us make the decision to try to “go without them.”
Invariably, this decision leads to decompensation, destabilization,
and many times, re-hospitalization. Although we’re committed to our
recovery, many times, the money isn’t there to cover everything we
need.
If consumers were here
today, they would describe the utter lack of services for mental
health consumers in the community. That’s why Redirection II is so
important. But mental illnesses are chronic illness, which means we
sometimes need services that simply aren’t there.
When we first experience symptoms of insomnia, anxiety, depression,
or mania, we can often manage those symptoms successfully with
pharmacological treatment, talk therapy, support groups, self-help
centers, physical exercise, diet, and other therapies. However, when
those coping strategies don’t work and we have no other services to
turn to, emergency rooms are often the only place to go.
During a psychiatric crisis, it may be difficult to ascertain
whether we’re experiencing a true emergency, under Medicaid’s
definition. We need to know that when no other services are
available, we have somewhere to go.
Dental coverage for
mental health consumers is not simply a “nice-to-have.” The drugs we
must take to manage our illnesses are extremely powerful and affect
the body’s ability to maintain healthy teeth and gums.
We are aware that some
states have attempted to cut costs by placing certain drugs on lists
that the state prefers doctors to prescribe because they seem to
offer a cost savings. We are strongly opposed to limiting a
prescriber’s use of mental health drugs because what works for one
person often doesn’t work for another person.
For many of us, it has taken years of trial, error, symptoms, and
suffering to arrive at the right drug for our illness. Doctors and
Advanced Practice Nurses, who also have the authority to write
prescriptions for us, must have the widest possible range of options
to choose from when helping us control symptoms, often by combining
many drugs at once.
Respectfully submitted,
Marie D. Verna
Director of Consumer Advocacy
Mental Health Association in NJ
121 N. Broad Street
Second Floor
Trenton, NJ 08608
609-656-0110
609-656-8078 (fax)
email: mverna@mhanj.org
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