Mental Health Safety Net Rally at the Capitol: April 24, 2023, 12:30-1:30 PM
Join Mental Health Safety Coalition and the County Commissioner Association of Pennsylvania as they advocate for the critical funding needed by mental health services for vulnerable Pennsylvanians.
State-funded, community-based mental health services often address social determinants of health that are critical to optimizing the effectiveness of the clinical services and the outcomes for individuals receiving services. For example, people with a mental illness who do not have stable housing often fail to effectively adhere to treatment, require crisis intervention, ultimately cost more money, and often have poorer outcomes than comparable individuals with stable housing.
Since 2009, state funding has remained flat. All agree that level funding, coupled with just the impact of normal inflation, is having a devastating impact on the ability of counties to sustain these services. Leaving aside the 10% cut in 2012, level funding over the past decade translates into a funding reduction of over 25% (National CPI, not compounded).
For Pennsylvanians with a mental illness, the impact of the county funding shortfalls are already evident with shortages of key mental health professionals, chronic underpayment of mental health providers, reductions/closures in mental health residential programs and supportive services such as employment and psychiatric rehabilitation services, uneven crisis response services, closure of outpatient programs, and the continuing criminalization of mental illness. This multi-faceted crisis has a tremendous cost in both human and fiscal terms, including:
