By Cliff Lewis

At the May 13 County Commissioners Meeting, the Board voted to approve the Lancaster County Mental Health Plan for Fiscal Year 2010-2011; it will next be submitted to Harrisburg for final approval. Although the plan is requesting $14.7 million for ‘10-’11, it is expected that the Mental Health/Mental Retardation (MH/MR) program will actually be receiving a cut from its current $12.7 million budget. This will be the organization’s first budget cut since 1991.

The plan was presented to Commissioners by James Laughman, Executive Director of the County’s MH/MR program. Laughman explained how the need for mental health services has recently increased: “We serve about 3,304 people at a given time. In a six-month period we have increased our population of people with serious mental illness by 121 people. That’s pretty significant to see that type of increase.” According to Laughman, there is a direct correlation between this surge and the recent economic slump: “As people lose jobs, they become more stressed; as they lose their housing, they become more stressed. And that can turn into serious mental illness.”

Laughman elaborated that the individuals who would most suffer from budget cuts are those for whom the organization would typically make exceptions: “The law says that only people diagnosed with serious mental illness are eligible for services….But there are times where you do what’s right. Maybe you have somebody that’s not necessary diagnosed on the far-end spectrum that the law has identified, so you open your funnel and realize that if you spend the money now in a preventative nature,…it’s going to save the County a lot of dollars.”

Commissioner Scott Martin expressed his own concern about the forthcoming MH/MR budget: “When you’re moving in the direction of trying things to reduce costs to the taxpayers, that these types of cuts put even those innovative programs in jeopardy is very disheartening….I’m very worried about the impact on our MH/MR program from these cuts.”

Laughman encouraged all concerned citizens to write to their State and Federal representatives to let them know that “this is not the time to cut human services. Because we will pay for it if we don’t have preventative services. You’re going to pay for it in prison costs, you’re going to pay for it in children and youth agencies, you’re going to pay for it in drug and alcohol abuse.”

The lack of State and Federal dollars for preventative care is nothing new to Lancaster County. A recent NewsLanc series found that Lancaster’s Drug and Alcohol Commission has, since 2002, lost over $300,000 in annual funding for its already under-funded rehab and prevention programs.