State reps fail to provide solutions to county's mental health needs
By Renee M. Liss
It was standing room only Tuesday night at Camden
County High School when Department of Human
Resources Commissioner Beverly Walker and Gwen
Skinner, director of the state Division of Mental Health,
arrived to meet with Camden County residents about
the lack of services for mental health in the area.
Walker said that in 1998, a program implemented by
the state decimated mental health services in Georgia,
and her department is still trying to straighten that out.
She and Skinner said they understand that what
Camden County wants is more and better services,
especially for adults, but that they need citizens' ideas
on how to bring those services to Camden County.
"I hope that even when we disagree, we can keep
talking," she said.
Although several people arrived at the meeting
expecting to talk mostly about mental illness, the
meeting focused more on drug abuse and how to treat
it. Walker said she wants to bring the system to a point
where people are being helped before they get to the
"deep end," and she wants to focus on prevention.
Walker said lack of funds is not the issue, it is how
money is being spent.
"Until we know that every nickel we have is being spent
well, it's hard to get more," she said.
Walker said children's services are the state's biggest
problem, with only 18 percent of the funds allocated to
children last year being spent on children. The rest
went to adult care.
"There is a movement to have basic services available
statewide, not just in the Atlanta area," Skinner said.
Many audience members complained that Camden
County is not receiving enough funding. Walker said
there has not been a reduction in funding to Camden
from last year to this year, but an audience member
pointed out that funding was cut in 2002, 2003 and
2004.
At one time, Gateway had drug addiction services
available to adults in Camden, but that funding was cut
and now Gateway only serves children. Adults have to
travel to Brunswick or farther to obtain services, and in a
county where there is no public transportation, that can
be difficult.
Walker said she and Skinner were there to find out
what they should do, and said if they knew at the state
level how to fix the problems, they would have done it
already.
One solution offered was to reallocate the money
being spent in state hospitals and use it for initiatives
like mobile health units and telemedicine.
Telemedicine would allow, especially in law
enforcement situations, a psychiatrist in another area to
diagnose a patient.
"We need your support when things come up," Walker
said. "We get beat down [by lawmakers] when we try to
be creative."
St. Marys Police Chief Tim Hatch outlined the problem
law enforcement agencies face, which is that they have
to take an officer off the streets for hours at a time to
transport mental health patients who have been
arrested to facilities that can treat them.
Hatch said there are only five officers at a time
patrolling St. Marys, and it is a public safety issue to
lose one of them for that amount of time.
"There's little we can do, other than arrest somebody,"
Hatch said.
Sixty percent of mental health funds support 2,800
beds in the state hospitals, and Walker said between
900 and 1,000 of those beds are taken up by people
who are developmentally disabled who could be sent
elsewhere, like group homes.
She said one problem the state faces is "not in my
backyard syndrome" when it tries to locate group
homes in neighborhoods.
"There's a strain on the system because we're
changing the system," Skinner said. "And it's a painful
change."
Leigh Guy of Kingsland said the meeting was what
she expected, but that a lot of children who were sitting
behind her expressed disappointment.
The children, many of them residents of the Honey
Creek drug treatment facility, thought the meeting would
focus more on children and were upset that only one
child was able to speak.
"I think the state's trying to do as much as it can," Guy
said.
She added that four years ago, Camden County had
many of the services residents are asking for now. She
said she just wants those services back without losing
what is in the county now.
"I was very disappointed in it," said Lorraine Stopyra of
Woodbine. "Too much was put onto substance abuse."
Stopyra, who recently moved from Philadelphia, Pa.,
said that with many aging Baby Boomers moving to the
area from the North, the state has to step up and
provide mental health services.
She said she thought Skinner and Walker were in
Camden to get opinions on what was needed in the
area.
"I didn't think that was accomplished," Stopyra said,
adding that it is difficult to get needed services in a
timely manner.
She added that she did not get any idea from what
Skinner and Walker said of what they were actually
going to do to solve the problem.
Ken Sylvester, president of the National Alliance of the
Mentally Ill, Camden County, said the state needs to
realize that Camden County is not small anymore.
"And it's getting bigger," he added.
Dr. Bryan Warren, the county's only full-time
psychiatrist, who retired in January, said he was
amazed by the turnout, but that he was slightly
disappointed by the results of the meeting.
He said he did hear Walker and Skinner talking on the
way to the St. Marys Airport and that they were speaking
about how to get the state to help provide incentives to
draw more psychiatrists to the area.
"The issue is, they realized there are demands here
that have to be addressed," Warren said.
Howard Sepp, administrator of the Southeast Georgia
Health System - Camden Campus said the hospital
cannot have a separate behavioral health unit because
the state will not issue a certificate of need for one.
"According to the state of Georgia, the area population
is not sufficiently large enough to support an inpatient
unit," Sepp said.
A task force was set up last year to recruit a new
full-time psychiatrist to the area, and one candidate, Dr.
Ruxandra Mares, attended Tuesday's meeting.
Warren asks that anyone with additional questions or
statements send them to him at 235 Cardinal Circle
West, St. Marys, GA 31558 or e-mail them to
bryell@netmagic.net and he will forward them to the
appropriate people at the state level.
Renee M. Liss
Assistant Editor
Tribune & Georgian
(912) 882-4927
Fax: (912) 882-6519
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