: Message of the Month

Mental health services: A good investment
June, 2010

Many feel that treatment for people with mental Illness is too costly to be considered. However, when you do NOT treat people with serious mental illness the results can be far more costly.

Without state and local mental health services, too many people living with mental illness end up in encounters with police or are warehoused unnecessarily in jails, prisons or nursing homes. In United States prisons alone, approximately 24 percent of inmates live with serious mental illness. Seventy percent of youths in the juvenile justice system also experience mental health disorders. At the same time, state spending on correctional systems has increased 350% in the past 20 years (from $10 billion to $45 billion), contributing significantly to state budget crises. What is needed, instead, is investment in mental health treatment and recovery services to minimize costly criminal justice involvement of persons living with serious mental illness.

Kane County Sheriff Patrick Perez states that the cost to keep a prisoner is more than $70 per day—that's more than $25,550 per year per inmate—and this leaves very little for special needs treatment. Encounters with the mentally ill are more time consuming and physically demanding than most.

Investment in proven, cost-effective mental health services can help reduce burdens on the criminal justice system. It is also an investment in recovery and saving lives of persons who struggle with mental illnesses. Treatment outcomes for even the most serious mental illnesses are comparable to outcomes for well-established general medical or surgical treatments for other chronic diseases. The early treatment success rate for mental illnesses are 60 to 80%, well above the approximately 40 to 60% success rates for common surgical treatments for heart disease. Depression treatment has been shown to pay for itself in terms of savings in lost earnings, not even taking into account other indirect costs such as increased productivity at work or reduction in other medical costs. Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) produce direct cost savings for employers with reduced medical, disability, and workers' compensation claims and even more indirect cost savings through improved work performance. The benefit to society of treatment includes reduced costs related to crime and health care and increased earnings. Which means that for every dollar we invest in treatment.