Mental healthcare breakdown in Massachusetts

Government cuts to state- and federally funded mental healthcare are causing troubles for patients, families and their communities, according to a report by the Boston Globe’s famous investigative Spotlight Team.

The report tracks mental healthcare in the state back to the 1800s, when state-sponsored mental hospitals offered “sunlight, fresh air and tranquility” to its patients who could not live independently. But by the middle of the last century, according to the newspaper, these facilities had become rundown “warehouses” for the mentally ill, rampant with abuse and providing inadequate treatment.

Nationally and at the state level, those inpatient facilities were marked for closure or targeted for reduced funding, often to achieve the double aims of closing budget gaps and providing more humane, community-based care that could allow for some degree of independence. But the funds that were then promised to those community-based or private care providers never came.

And now Massachusetts has an underserved mentally ill population with little or no public resources available and existing private resources also experiencing difficulty through underpaid Medicaid claims.

According to the Globe:

“It’s an inescapable legacy of deinstitutionalization, as it was managed here: Although many former patients went on to better lives, severely ill people were pushed into a community system that they weren’t ready for—and that wasn’t ready for them. What has followed is a revolving door of emergency room visits, frequent run-ins with police, and nagging fears among family and providers that someone under their care will turn violent.

No one is calling for a return to the old institutions and old ways, but the status quo is untenable.”

Check out the Spotlight report to see how people with mental illness can become dangerous to family and neighbors when left without treatment options, plus a video outlining the original purpose of the state’s mental health hospitals—and how that all fell apart.