After strong persuasion from state hospitals and patients to reconsider a decision to cut state psychiatric day treatment programs in Massachusetts, Governor Mitt Romney reversed his original budget cut last week.
The original cut was among the numerous cuts in Romney’s budget recommendation to the state, which came as a result of a continuous decline in the Massachusetts economy, a problem affecting states across the nation. The state will take the original cut of $1.1 million from somewhere else in the system, according to Donna Rheaume, a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Romney made the budget cut reversal after Ron Preston, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, heard compelling testimony at the budget hearings last week, Rheaume said. According to an article in The Boston Globe, Preston said the state government has heard more about psychiatric day treatment than any other budget cut issue and therefore realized how important the treatment was to the people in the program.
Organizations persuaded the governor to reconsider the budget cut in a variety of ways, according to Dr. Bruce Bird, the CEO of the North Suffolk Mental Hospital Association.
‘We asked anyone who believed in this cause to call the Governor’s office and the EOHH,’ Bird said. ‘We heard that they received a lot of phone calls, around 2,000 calls a day.’
Friends and supporters of North Suffolk Mental Hospital Association as well as advocacy groups such as the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill also contributed to the effort, Bird said.
The original cut would have eliminated the state’s psychiatric day treatment programs but continued care for necessary outpatient mental health services, including ‘individual, group and family therapy, medication evaluation and management, psychiatric emergency services and inpatient psychiatric services,’ according to a press release from the Executive Department of the State office.
The budget cut would have also eliminated assistance for about 4,000 Massachusetts residents in the day treatment programs and ‘wiped out treatment throughout the state and put all patients back on the street as of April 1, 2003,’ Dr. Bird said.
The role of day treatment programs is to help people with more serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and depression, and who need more than just outpatient therapy, Bird said. These programs take place two to five times a week depending on the patient’s needs and offer practical training.
‘The day treatment programs integrate various mental health services that are focused on promoting on consumer rights, responsibility, rehabilitation, and recovery,’ said Kathy Sodhi, a spokesperson for the Department of Mental Health. ‘Our goal is to help them return to community,’
‘Clearly this program made a big difference for people living on the margins,’ Rheaume said.
According to Bird, ‘the day treatment program is an intense program that is cost-effective because one day is about the same as a one-hour treatment that a patient would normally receive in outpatient therapy.’
Day treatment programs also people with a history of hospitalization, including homelessness, giving them training geared toward helping them to stay off the streets.
Currently 99 people are in the day treatment program in East Boston’s North Suffolk Mental Hospital Association, a drop from the 250 patients served one year ago, Bird said.
In his address to the state on Jan. 29, Romney stated that the current budget problem, a deficit $650 million more than the initially planned deficit over the next five months, is a situation that offers no time to restructure the state government but only time for budget cuts, given the ’emergency timetable.’
‘Reversing the budget cut was a brave thing for [Romney] to do politically,’ Bird said. ‘A lot of politicians don’t want to say that they made mistakes, which is what he and the secretary of state are doing. This is a very encouraging sign from the governor.’
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