Texas’
Mental Health System
By
Donald Wayne
A
Mixed Bag
Years
ago, I was a stringer photographer for the local newspaper in
Huntsville, Texas, covering an execution. I was outside the “Walls”
unit, and toward that fateful midnight, when the execution took
place, I photographed protesters, and advocates, stood beside the TV
news videographers pointing their lenses at the lit outside clock. I
was at a remove, but it was one of the most brutal events I’ve ever
been through.
While
Texas seems to be a mecca of law and order, mental health services
are often underfunded. While the nation spends per capita about $125,
the state of Texas spends $39. In a Dallas Morning News essay online,
Clayton McClesky, writing about mental illness and suicide, points
out that when a few years ago the West Nile Virus killed seven people
in Dallas, the authorities spent $3 million for aerial spraying of
mosquitoes. It is a matter of emphasis. Nor is access so good. About
488,520 in the state have serious mental illness, while 156,880 are
being served. That’s about 33 percent. I think that may be due to a
shortage of mental healthcare workers, as is the case in Texas.
Yet
paradoxically, I have had good results. The procedure is something
like this: you call the Texas Mental Health number, and participate
in a phone interview. If you qualify, you then get an in-person
interview, and if qualified after that interview, are assigned mental
health services. I was assigned a therapist, and have had three. My
most recent, helping me for about five years. She was a godsend, and
though it’s been difficult, I have nothing but respect for her. The
mental health staff and professionals are caring, highly capable
people.
A
few years ago, my rural mental health center opened a Peer Support
Center, and it is quite nice, with many donors and volunteers. It’s
a place to relax. Sometimes we have big meals around the holidays,
and there are computers, a television, and meeting rooms. I myself
have been a Peer Center Board Advisor and have been on television and
in the newspaper doing interviews about the Center. More recently,
the Center serves veterans. There is a major military base in central
Texas; therefore helping veterans in mental health is especially
needed. Pointing veterans to resources have been important, and
volunteer colleagues have done a good job in staffing the center for
all consumers.
Some
years ago, the Texas legislature passed a bill that makes claims on
Medicaid beneficiaries, like me, if one is 55 or older. Once a
recipient dies, the State makes a claim on the person's estate,
unless there is less than $10,000, or a spouse is still living, to
make up for repeated expense to the State. I know, I know, there is
no free lunch, but as I have never married and as my home is about
the only thing of value I own, and it was inherited, I wanted to give
it to whom I chose in my will. So, in this respect, I feel a little
brutalized.
