General Resources / Legal Resources / Medical
Resources / Briefing Papers / State Activity
Hospital Closures / Preventable
Tragedies / Press Room / Search
Our Site / Home
STATEMENT
By Executive Director Mary T. Zdanowicz
PRINTABLE PDF VERSION OF THIS STATEMENT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
November 19, 2003
Alicia
Aebersold 703-294-6008 or
[email protected]
We Deserve Better: NIMH Denies Hope to Those Most in
Need
When the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC)
discovered that nearly three-quarters of NIMH research grants had nothing to do with
severe mental illnesses, TAC was compelled to join with Public Citizen to expose this
humanitarian and fiscal debacle by releasing A Federal Failure in Psychiatric Research:
Continuing NIMH Negligence in Funding Significant Research on Serious Mental Illnesses. It
is nothing less that a national tragedy to misallocate public research dollars that should
be used to offer hope of better treatment and possibly a cure for severe mental illnesses
like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (manic depression).
The costs of not focusing research dollars on
the most severe mental illnesses are astronomical. Total federal spending on treating and
supporting people with mental illnesses is now estimated to be $45 billion, and rapidly
growing, as it is the federal government that shoulders the lion’s share of the costs
through Medicaid, Medicare, Supplemental Security Income, and Social Security Disability
Income. As noted in a report recently released by the President’s Commission on
Mental Health, “Medicaid is now the largest payer of mental health services in the
country.”
Although it is clear that the effect of these severe
brain diseases are a tremendous financial drain on the nation’s already struggling
budget, NIMH continues to devote only 28.5 percent of its budget to researching severe
mental illnesses. As a family member and taxpayer, I am outraged that NIMH funding is so
grossly misused.
The humanitarian costs of these illnesses are shocking. At
least 130,000 people with severe mental illnesses are homeless and living on the
nation’s streets. At any given time, there are more people with untreated severe
psychiatric illnesses living on America’s streets than are receiving care in
hospitals. A quarter of them regularly eat from garbage cans. They are victimized more
often than those who are homeless and do not have a brain disease, and are significantly
more likely to have been robbed, beaten, threatened with a weapon, or injured. The risk of
rape is so high among homeless women with severe mental illnesses that the authors of one
study found that “rape and physical battery are normative experiences.”
Faced with this disgrace, NIMH chose to fund research on
“Preschool Children’s Understanding of Love” instead of a study of support
for individuals recently released from the psychiatric hospital that might reduce the risk
of re-hospitalization.
Suicide is the number one cause of premature death among
people with schizophrenia, with an estimated 10 percent to 13 percent killing themselves,
and it is even more pervasive in people with bipolar disorder, as 15 percent to 17 percent
(about one out of seven) take their own lives. The rate in the general population is
approximately 1 percent. Yet for six years, NIMH has been funding a study of families
coping with change in the Czech Republic.
Just as horrible are the statistics on those with severe
mental illnesses who end up incarcerated in our nation’s jails and prisons. The Los
Angeles County jail is now the largest psychiatric facility in the United States today,
and studies indicate that there are approximately 120,000 seriously mentally ill
individuals in the nation’s jails and prisons. Yet NIMH awarded $350,000 to
researchers studying courtship behavior among Drosophilia fruit flies.
Through the experiences of my two siblings who have
schizophrenia and the thousands of families who have contacted TAC in desperation, I have
witnessed the devastating consequences of severe mental illnesses. As a family member and
advocate I am all too aware of the limitations in our current understanding of and ability
to provide timely and effective treatment of these illnesses. Our hope for the future lies
in the research. NIMH cannot be allowed to continue squandering the resources that can
make our hopes a reality.
###
The Treatment Advocacy Center (www.psychlaws.org) is a national nonprofit dedicated
to eliminating barriers to timely and humane treatment for millions of Americans with
severe mental illnesses. TAC is working on the national, state, and local levels to
educate civic, legal, criminal justice, and legislative communities on the benefits of
assisted treatment in an effort to decrease homelessness, jailings, suicide, violence and
other devastating consequences caused by lack of treatment.
general
resources | legal resources | medical
resources | briefing papers | state activity
hospital closures | preventable
tragedies | press room | search
| home
Treatment Advocacy
Center
|
The contents of TAC's website are copyrighted by the Treatment Advocacy Center unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved and content may be reproduced, downloaded, disseminated, or transferred, for single use, or by nonprofit organizations for educational purposes only, if correct attribution is made. TAC is an I.R.C. � 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation. Donations are appreciated and are eligible for the charitable contribution deduction under the provisions of I.R.C. � 170. Please note that TAC does not accept funding from pharmaceutical companies or entities involved in the sale, marketing, or distribution of such products.
|