Lost along the way (mental health programs cut)

[Rose Siding]

Lost along the way
Seven Counties Services has cut its mental-health programs, straining the community's limited resources

Six months after Kentucky's largest community mental-health program cut its budget by $4 million, psychiatrists, social workers, judges and others say that patients are being harmed and other agencies are becoming overburdened.

While Seven Counties Services continues to provide for 31,000 mentally ill and mentally retarded people in the Louisville region, it has largely stopped being the safety net for the uninsured.

Because of reduced state funding and frozen Medicaid payments, the agency no longer sees patients with severe mental illness unless they are being released from a hospital or are current clients. It also closed some programs and eliminated 69 jobs.

The effects of these cutbacks are being felt across the Louisville community as the mentally ill have to find new places for treatment, or skip it altogether. "I would venture to say we've got holes in the safety net," said Sheila Schuster, executive director of the Kentucky Mental Health Coalition.

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2003/07/27ky/wir-front-seven0727-18933.html