Opinion

Op-Ed: In Maine, mentally ill are slighted

Posted on Sept. 10, 2009, at 2:03 a.m.

In the Sept. 6 edition of the Bangor Daily News, Brenda Harvey, commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, was quoted saying the department has been reduced to providing only “core services” to clients. Appropriations from the state’s general fund to the DHHS have declined by nearly $200 million in just four years.

The State of Maine’s attempts to save as many nickels and dimes as possible have slighted the mentally ill in our state for decades. Starting in the early 1970s, Maine’s two state mental hospitals, the Augusta Mental Health Institute and the Bangor Mental Health Institute, dramatically scaled back in response to national trends. They reduced hospital populations drastically.

The plan was to move patients who were not major threats to themselves and others back into the community. They would hypothetically be monitored by regional community centers. This plan has continued ever since. More and more patients have been released, often with no home to move into.

In 2004 the hospitals were closed and smaller facilities took their place. Augusta now boasts Riverview Psychiatric Center. Bangor has Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center. There are now 92 beds at Riverview and 100 at Dorothea Dix — not enough to handle Maine’s increasing population of more than 1.3 million. Two major cases — in 1996 and 2006 — sadly illustrate the problems regarding the downsizing and subsequent closings of the two mental health clinics.

A 37-year-old man from Waterville named Mark Bechard became a national story Jan. 27, 1996. He broke into the convent and chapel of the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament, a small Catholic institute in his hometown where he often attended mass. He then bludgeoned and stabbed four elderly nuns with instruments ranging from a knife to a statue of the Virgin Mary. Two nuns died and two were seriously injured. Prior to the killings, Bechard had been in and out of AMHI. The night of the killings, he was off of his medication without supervision.

On June 20, 2006, Robert Bruce came home to find his wife Amy dead. She had been victim of a hatchet attack. The killer was the Bruces’ 24-year-old son, William. He was a disturbed man who had sought treatment in Augusta many times. After a discharge from Riverview, his father said that his behavior became “out of control.” He could not be forced back into the hospital or back onto medication. An anonymous source at the hospital told me a Riverview doctor said William would “kill somebody” upon release. When did my source hear this? As William Bruce was discharged prior to his mother’s violent death.

These are examples of the outcomes and budget cuts. As debates over nonsensical “death panels” at raucous town hall meetings have raged on in the national health care discussion, these dire issues have been absent from the dialogue. Help could well come with national intervention. However, before that day comes, Maine’s legislature must conduct investigations into the effectiveness of these downsized mental hospitals. Our state government must examine the status of the mentally ill in the correctional system.

The Federal Department of Justice said in a 2006 study that 64 percent of local jail inmates and 56 percent of state prisoners have “mental health problems.” Maine must come up with the money and the planning to better treat the mentally ill for the good of the entire community.

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Michael Shepherd is sophomore journalism student.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009, 2:03 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.