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Future of Vermont’s
mental health care services documented in video
(May
2008 Issue)
By Jennifer Chase Esposito
Two panel discussions were videotaped in late January documenting
opinions on how and what should replace Vermont State Hospital,
(VSH) and how best the Green Mountain state can accommodate its
mental health patients. The VSH was notified in 2003 by the Center
for Medicare and Medicaid Services that the two suicides at the
hospital that year and other issues found by the organization were
cause for its decertification and closing.
The videos voiced the options that were similarly outlined in the
February 2008 New England Psychologist article "Strategies
examined to replace Vermont Hospital."
In them - "The Future of Mental Health Care in Vermont" and "Don't
Send Me to Waterbury!" - experts spoke on whether a new hospital
or a "recovery in community" approach to healing would better suit
the state, which according to panelist Rep. Ann Donahue (R-Northfield),
editor of CounterPoint - a Vermont publication of news, commentary,
and arts, submitted by psychiatric survivors, mental health consumers
and their families - Vermont has one of country's lowest per-capita
use of inpatient hospitalization.
Both events were filmed and edited by volunteer Morgan W. Brown,
creator of "Beyond-VSH," a blog dedicated to discussing the future
of VSH and Vermont's community mental health care system at large.
The hour-long "The Future of Mental Health Care in Vermont," was
held Jan. 23, 2008, and was a discussion filmed at the Vermont State
House focusing on the recovery of patients in Vermont and whether
the state should focus on a peer-support-based community model.
In the audience were Mary Ellen Gottlieb and Morgan Brown. Panelists
were Albert Galves, Ph.D., an authority on peer-run crisis intervention,
member of the board of directors for the International Center for
the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and a licensed psychologist
in Colorado; and Xenia Williams, former patient at VSH and for
the last 10 year, a case manager for Washington County Mental Health
and at Chrysalis House in the home intervention program.
"The state of Vermont has to make a decision," said Williams, a
23-year veteran of Vermont's mental health system whose recovery
process included transitioning off her psychiatric drugs. "Is the
state going to build a state hospital or move toward a community-based
treatment system?" Williams promoted the benefits of peer-support
programs replacing the previous hospital model.
"We've learned about what it takes to help people recover," said
Galves. "What it takes … is encouragement, and giving them places
to live in which they can feel safe and in which they can enter
into relationships with people that feel good; and in which they
can start feeling better about themselves. And as they become less
afraid, less agitated, they begin to regain their abilities to use
their faculties and to begin work and get engaged in other satisfying
activities.
"That's not very scientific, but it works," he said. "So if you
want to help people recover, we need to help provide them those
types of living arrangements."
Text-only slides following the 40-minute video stated that the
most important need of Vermont's mental health care system patients
is "permanent, safe, affordable, accessible housing in which to
live within a community of choice," and that the obstacles to housing
choice in Vermont are because of a lack of sufficiently available
and affordable housing stock and subsidies to pay for it.
In "Don't Send Me To Waterbury!" taped on Jan. 24, 2008, panelists
discussed the 20-page report submitted by the Ethan Allen Institute
(EAI) titled "Don't Send Me To Waterbury," and whether Vermont should
replace its state hospital with a more than $100 million building
for 53 patients or shift the state's focus toward a peer-run center
offering community-based recovery programs and new sets of services
for non-criminal patients.
Moderator for this event was John McClaughry, president of EAI.
Panelists were: Galves, Donahue, former State Senate Health and
Welfare Chairman James Leddy; and Michael Hartman, commissioner
of the Vermont Department of Mental Health.
"What do people need?" asked Donahue, who is opposed to building
a 200-bed hospital in Montpelier. "Why aren't we looking at what
people need? We all know that the more you address community mental
health support services, the lower you'll have incarceration rates.
We also have found data that in Vermont, where we have one of the
highest rates of community services, we have one of the lowest rates
of incarceration."
"We should move away from an institutionally based system," said
Leddy.
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