NORWICH – With the recent announcement that the inpatient mental health clinics will remain open in Binghamton and Elmira, Ruth Roberts, director of Chenango County Community Mental Hygiene Service, says she isn’t concerned those centers will close any time in the near future.
But that doesn’t mean the field of mental health should ignore a call for necessary change, she said, citing prevention as the key to fix dependency on inpatient housing for psychiatric patients.
“The general pattern lately has been to direct state funding and efforts more to preventing the need for inpatient operations. What we need to focus on as we move forward at the local level is what we’re doing to prevent people from going into inpatient housing,” she said.
In December, Governor Andrew Cuomo and State Senator Tom Libous (52nd Senate District) announced the Greater Binghamton Health Center (GBHC) and Elmira Psychiatric Center would stay open, despite previous announcements from the NYS Office of Mental Health that it would close the facilities by 2014 – a plan that was “a bad decision from the beginning,” said Roberts.
“The original plan for our county was to use the facility in Syracuse to be the center of excellence for adults, and Utica as the center of excellence for children ... but geography is an issue for people in Chenango County. It would have created a huge gap in this area where (inpatient mental health) services would not be available.”
In a media release, Senator Libous stated, “Since the Office of Mental Health released its flawed plan to close GBHC in July, I’ve been working very hard to convince the Governor that we deserve better. And the Governor agreed.”
Efforts to keep centers in Binghamton and Elmira open were reinforced by local legislatures including the Chenango County Board of Supervisors, which passed a resolution supporting the creation of Southern Tier Office of Mental Health if the centers were to close. The resolution notes the Binghamton and Elmira centers serve a rural population of nearly 1.5 million people in 15 counties of the Souther Tier and parts of the Finger Lakes.
In December, the Office of Mental Health (OMH) was ordered by Governor Cuomo to change its plan to allow the two facilities to stay operational. Under the new plan, the child and adolescent unit at GBHC will continue services; and OMH will develop 60 new adult beds in community residences throughout the region, and gradually shrink its adult beds at GBHC from 90 to 60.
Likewise, the Elmira Psychiatric Center will continue services, though numbers of its beds will be reduced to 24. Meanwhile, Roberts said there are also concerns of possible state funding cuts to the Bassett Department of Psychiatry, the Cooperstown agency that provides in-patient services for many adults living in Chenango County.
While news that both centers will remain open is good, said Roberts, “Reality is, we have a finite amount of dollars available and the question is how best to use those dollars to maximize and improve quality of life. Those are big questions.”
Roberts proposed further development of outpatient programs locally that could work with individuals seeking professional mental health services. Such programs would focus on prevention, thereby eliminating the need for inpatient services.
“I’m not opposed to considering closure of an inpatient facility, but we have to look at what those people can do in the community if those facilities are not there to help them,” Roberts added.
She continued, “If you look at the psych centers across the state and the population and demographic changes across the state, realistically, we can’t sustain these institutions in the future ... At some point, we may have to revisit those centers closing; but for now, taking away Elmira and Binghamton (centers) would create a huge gap in our area.”