Huge influx of mentally ill under 60  taxes nursing home care

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By Ben Sutherly, Staff Writer Updated 10:02 PM Monday, January 10, 2011

The proportion of Ohio’s nursing home residents under age 60 has quadrupled since 1994. An influx of mentally ill patients has driven much of that increase, posing risks to other residents.

Nearly 16 percent of the state’s nursing home residents were under 60 in 2009. That’s above the national average, and up from 4 percent just 15 years earlier.

“We’ve never served more people under age 65 in nursing homes than we are right now,” said Bob Applebaum, director of the Ohio Long-term Care Research Project at Miami University’s Scripps Gerontology Center.

About three of four nursing home patients under 60 are diagnosed with a severe mental illness, Applebaum said.

The soaring under-60 population, part of a national trend, also reflects more patients recuperating from hip and knee surgeries and other intensive hospital procedures in lower-cost nursing home settings.

But it has been driven primarily by a shift of the mentally ill from Ohio’s depleted behavioral health support system to nursing homes, which house 85,000 people on any given day, Applebaum said.

Staff often don’t have the expertise or time to meet the needs of those with behavioral issues, he said.

A 30 percent funding cut for the state’s mental health system in recent years has displaced some of Ohio’s mentally ill. In Dayton, for example, Twin Valley Behavioral Healthcare, the region’s only public psychiatric hospital, closed its doors in June 2008.

As state government prepares for more cuts, there may be better ways to use limited funds, said Hubert Wirtz, CEO of the Ohio Council of Behavioral Health & Family Services Providers. One idea: create a behavioral health “medical home” for the mentally ill, through which those entering the behavioral health system would have more seamless access to primary health care, potentially heading off more costly treatment.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7457.

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