MN Transforming Mental Health Services for Adults
by Kevin Goodno, Commissioner, MN Dept of Human Services
As we observe Mental
Health Month this May, milestones are being reached in a remarkable
transition of Minnesota’s adult mental
health services away from institutions to community settings.
Consumers, their advocates and policy makers have long favored having
mental health services close to where people live and work. The numerous
benefits of this approach include:
• Allowing people with mental illness to draw on their natural
supports of family and friends;
• Reducing the incidence and duration of hospitalizations by offering
a variety of treatment and support services; and,
• Maximizing the ability of people with mental illness to retain
housing during hospital visits.
County regional planning
groups, consumers, advocates and the Department of Human Services
(DHS) have been engaged over the past several years in this effort.
Re-directing institutional services’ resources
to an array of community-based services is the result of research
that has proven these services to be effective in improving the lives
of people with mental illness. These new services include:
• Assertive Community Treatment Teams: These groups of professionals
come from multiple disciplines serving as “hospitals without
walls.” People with serious mental illness who need this level
of treatment will receive intensive, round-the-clock supports in
their homes, at work and elsewhere in the community.
• Intensive Residential
Treatment Facilities: These places will serve people who otherwise
would have unnecessary, extended hospital stays.
• Crisis Response
Providers: These groups will deliver an array of services, from
mobile crisis teams to short-term crisis stabilization beds that
help divert individuals from unnecessary hospital stays.
These new services complement other supports, including outpatient
treatment. They will also reinforce the help people with mental
illness receive in order to work and to manage various activities
of daily life.
Psychiatric hospital capacity also is being developed in more Minnesota
communities so that people can be treated closer to their homes and
families.
New 16-bed psychiatric hospitals slated to open this year are located
in Alexandria, Bemidji, Brainerd, Fergus Falls, Monticello, Rochester,
St. Cloud, St. Peter and Wadena. Regional planners have determined
these facilities should be run by State Operated Services, the part
of DHS that provides direct care to people with disabilities. Promising
discussions about expanding inpatient psychiatric capacity in community
hospitals also are occurring in Cambridge, Hibbing, Mar-shall and
Willmar.
The new psychiatric
hospital capacity will be in addition to the 15 community hospitals
across Minnesota under contract to provide inpatient care to adults.
Total capacity will be similar to what exists today in the state’s
regional treatment center system. However, expanded community-based
treatment and supports will allow hospitals to be used for those
who truly need inpatient care. The need will lessen for hospitals
to serve as interim placement for people who cannot return home
because housing with supports is not available.
Development of the community-based services is naturally leading
to the closure of regional treatment centers. This will free resources
for further reinvestment in mental health service improvements. New
services are expected to make it possible to discontinue providing
inpatient mental health services on the Brainerd, Fergus Falls, St.
Peter and Willmar campuses within the next year.
While Minnesota’s
restructured adult mental health services are based on state-of-the-art,
research-proven techniques in treatment, the movement toward community-based
services for people with mental illness and other disabilities
is decades old. This Mental Health Month, it is encouraging to
see a vision long held by mental health consumers, their advocates
and policymakers becoming a reality.
