COMMENTARY: Expand mental health law

New Jersey’s community system of care is a leader in integrating health care, mental health and treatment for children and adults addicted to drugs or alcohol, which means better, more comprehensive care. But we can do much better, and federal legislation may give us the chance.

Last year, Congress passed the Excellence in Mental Health Act, a law co-sponsored by Rep. Leonard Lance, R-N.J., that gave 24 states a total of $23 million in planning grants for a two-year pilot program that will eventually help the federal government allocate more than $1 billion for the nation’s behavioral health system. That is by far the most substantial federal investment in mental health and addiction services in generations.

I am proud that New Jersey is one of those states. However, only eight of the 24 states will be selected for the pilot program, which promises more money, more integrated programs and greater financial stability to each state’s mental health and addiction providers.

The pilot program will expand access to community-based addiction and mental health care for more than 750,000 uninsured and low-income Americans, including 100,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them here in New Jersey. This type of investment will be a step forward in jump-starting our state’s long underfunded community mental health and addictions system of care.

That is why we are calling on Congress today to expand the Excellence in Mental Health Act program to allow all 24 states to participate in the pilot program.

Obviously, one enormous barrier to providing those children and adults who need mental health and/or addictions treatment and supports has been the way providers are reimbursed. The Excellence in Mental Health Act improves Medicaid reimbursement for these services, which means a sturdier financial base for provider organizations that will allow them to expand and improve services.

The need is acute, in New Jersey and across the nation. Each year, only four in 10 Americans with a mental health disorder receive treatment. Only one in 10 with an addiction gets help, with astronomical costs in lost productivity, homelessness, incarceration, domestic violence and child welfare services. About 40 people a day overdose on opioids, and someone dies by suicide in our country every 15 minutes, while there are more than 650,000 hospital visits related to self-inflicted injuries sustained each year.

These statistics prove that there simply is not enough access to treatment and services, which means our emergency rooms, jails and homeless shelters are filled with individuals with problems that these places are not equipped to handle.

Up to half of homeless people have an untreated mental illness. Almost 10 percent of people in nursing homes are not elderly but people with severe mental illnesses.

The police say they are interacting with more individuals with mental illness, and two-thirds of the people in our jails and prisons have a substance-use disorder.

We can spend the money now to treat and even help prevent mental illness and/or addictions, or we can incur the even larger costs in lives lost by overdose, drug abuse or suicide.

The two dozen states competing for eight slots represent a broad swath of the nation, from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, urban and rural, red and blue states.

Their problems are different and yet alike. In New Jersey, we struggle to cope with increasing problems of deaths from opioid overdoses, homelessness and backed-up emergency rooms, as well as long waiting lists for treatment. In rural states, people with these issues may have to travel for hours to get treatment. The same problems, different ways to solve them.

Finding those solutions are what these 24 planning grants are all about. Let’s urge New Jersey’s congressional delegation to support expansion of the pilot program so we are guaranteed a place and a chance to make a difference in how we treat our state’s children and adults with mental illness and/or addictions.

It is not only the humane thing to do, but it also makes economic sense.

Debra L. Wentz is president and CEO of the New Jersey Association of Mental Health and Addiction Agencies Inc.