Suicides increase, but mental health funding faces cuts

Proposed state budget cuts could mean that about 16,000 people will lose access to care.

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By William Hershey, Staff Writer Updated 8:34 AM Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Kelli Ott won’t make it to Columbus today, June 24, to join in the protests against Gov. Ted Strickland’s proposed budget cuts for the mentally ill and those with drug and alcohol problems.

Ott has too much work back in rural Preble County, which already has recorded six suicides this year — one more than all of 2008.

“If the trend continues for this year, we will have doubled our suicide rate,” said Ott, executive director of the Preble County Mental Health and Recovery Board.

With 12.3 percent unemployment in May, Preble County, with a population of about 42,000, has the highest jobless rate among Dayton-area counties.

Ott blames the economic downturn on the increase in demand for services at the county’s mental health center in Eaton. “We are having a massive influx of people coming through the door,” she said.

Handling that influx amid the state’s economic crisis will get increasingly more difficult. The board gets about $1,011,000 from the state for community mental health services, but the governor’s cuts would reduce that by about $380,000, she said.

Cheri L. Walter, CEO of the Ohio Association of County Behavioral Health Authorities, said the story is the same across the state in counties large and small.

Spending reductions for community mental health services are part of the $2.4 billion in cuts Strickland is proposing to close a $3.2 billion gap in the proposed state budget.

“About 16,000 people will lose access to mental health (care),” Walter said. State funding for community mental health services would be cut by about 34 percent overall, she said.

The working poor, mostly those with no private insurance but too much income to qualify for the government-backed Medicaid program, will bear the brunt of the cuts, Walter said.

Strickland said his budget-balancing plan attempts to prioritize “extremely limited resources toward critical health and safety services.”

But Ott said that she is disappointed that Strickland, a psychologist by training, would support such severe cuts to programs that serve the mentally ill.“I’m very disappointed in the lack of support,” she said.

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