Two-thirds of states cut mental healthcare funds: advocacy group | Reuters

Two-thirds of states cut mental health funding from their general fund budgets over the last two years, according to a report released by a mental illness advocacy group on Wednesday.

Kentucky with 47 percent, Alaska with 35 percent, and South Carolina and Arizona both with 23 percent made the largest percentage cuts to mental health spending in their general fund budgets, which do not include federal Medicaid funding, the study by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found.

"Cutting mental health means that costs only get shifted to emergency rooms, schools, police, local courts, jails and prisons," said NAMI executive director Michael Fitzpatrick. "The taxpayer still pays the bill."

"Some states are trying to hold the line or make progress, but most are cutting deep. This stands in contrast to the intense national concern about the mental health care system following the Arizona tragedy two months ago," he said.

via reuters.com

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Despite Tucson Shooting And Rising Needs, Mental Health Given Low Budget Priority

By Amy Biegelsen
The Center for Public Integrity

It's been two months now since Jared Lee Loughner opened fire outside a Tucson, Ariz. shopping center killing six people and wounding 14 more, and what's come to light since leaves more than a few troubling questions.

In the days following the shooting, it was revealed that authorities had barred Loughner from Pima Community College, where he attended classes, until he was certified as fit by a mental health professional. Loughner apparently never sought professional help, and the questions the community college had about Loughner's state of mind still resonate -- what was going on with this young man, and is there anything the local mental health infrastructure could have done to change the horrible outcome?

via huffingtonpost.com

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More young people are winding up in nursing homes - Yahoo! News

Adam Martin doesn't fit in here. No one else in this nursing home wears Air Jordans. No one else has stacks of music videos by 2Pac and Jay-Z. No one else is just 26.

It's no longer unusual to find a nursing home resident who is decades younger than his neighbor: About one in seven people now living in such facilities in the U.S. is under 65. But the growing phenomenon presents a host of challenges for nursing homes, while patients like Martin face staggering isolation.

"It's just a depressing place to live," Martin says. "I'm stuck here. You don't have no privacy at all. People die around you all the time. It starts to really get depressing because all you're seeing is negative, negative, negative."

The number of under-65 nursing home residents has risen about 22 percent in the past eight years to about 203,000, according to an analysis of statistics from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That number has climbed as mental health facilities close and medical advances keep people alive after they've suffered traumatic injuries. Still, the overall percentage of nursing home residents 30 and younger is less than 1 percent.

Martin was left a quadriplegic when he was accidentally shot in the neck last year by his stepbrother. He spent weeks hospitalized before being released to a different nursing home and eventually ended up in his current residence, the Sarasota Health and Rehabilitation Center. There are other residents who are well short of retirement age, but he is the youngest.

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