Petition to enhance inpatient mental health care access in Iowa

A strategic and constructive mental health treatment setting plan is desperately needed in Iowa. We need the MHIs for patient care as well as a valuable educational resource for health care professional clinical training in mental health services. Southeastern Iowa is definitely in need of expansion of mental health care services, rather than closing them.

totally repugnant! what can our politicians be thinking?

Keep MHI open Iowa needs them!

reassess the need for good mental health services vs new prisons!

Mentally ill people who need urgent care and stablization can be a danger to self and others. If there are no places for them, they either end up in the streets or worse commit crimes and end up in prison which is far more costly than institutionalized care and depending on the crimes they commit for lack of care, they may affect someone else's life forever. Cutting these services is irresponsible and dangerous.

This has not been thought through by any government official. Just letting the money talk. Shame on you.

Iowa clearly needs more psychiatric resources, including inpatient beds, not fewer.

Iowa mental health hospital in Mt Pleasant saved my life. I insist that they not be closed. there is not enough beds as it is.

The Governer's plan to close MHI's seems based more on hope than reality. In an ideal world, there would not be so many Iowans who do not need help for serious illness (whether it be cancer, infectious disease, mental illness, etc.). But the stark reality is that many Iowans suffer from severe illness and are not able to be safely cared for in the community. There is no easy solution for this problem, but it requires the dedication, expertise, and RESOURCES of all Iowans to help provide the proper care and compassion these individuals desrve.

Looks like the petition is not keeping up. Many thanks to resident Dr. Aubrey Chan for signing!

Losing the dual diagnosis program at MHI Mt Pleasant will be a huge loss to the state. There is a great need for this type of progamming.

Excerpts from my open letter to Governor Terry Branstad, the full text of which can be viewed at link http://thepracticalpsychosomaticist.com/2015/02/06/an-open-letter-to-governor-terry-branstad-on-planned-mhi-closures/ : “I’m a staff psychiatrist at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics (UIHC). News sources indicate you’ve told them that you’re collaborating with UIHC Psychiatry to somehow pick up the slack after the MHIs are closed. That comes as a surprise to me and the rest of my colleagues. We’re not aware of any formal conversation you’ve had with us about it. And many are entering their signatures on a petition I’ve started to register their disappointment in your plan and their hope that you’ll consider an alternative.” “Many of us believe that it’s wrong to send a false message to the public that UIHC can somehow make up the difference for the inpatient beds which will be lost by the closure of the MHIs at Clarinda and Mt. Pleasant. This is a puzzling way to reach out to the public for support of a plan to reduce access to inpatient psychiatric care at a time when we need the opposite.” “Our inpatient units are often full and patients sit in our Emergency Department waiting, sometimes for days, to transfer out to other hospitals in the state—which are also often full. This sometimes leads to violent confrontations with patients burdened with persistent, severe mental illness, raising the risk for injury to themselves and to hospital workers.”

How many more shooting sprees or deaths will we need before our culture realizes the importance of caring for the mentally ill? We need more psychiatric bedding the State of Iowan not less. Our mental health system in Iowa is INSANE!

thanks James

We are asking the right question - what are we to do about our aging mental health infrastructure? But the answer - depopulating the facilities and assuming the already overburdened community resources will pick up the pieces - does not take into account the real needs of the most vulnerable members of our population or the realities of the current system. I urge the governor to work with those working on the front lines in our community to help find more appropriate solutions to address these pressing issues.

Keep these centers open!

This is a complicated issue, no doubt. Perhaps dollars could be better utlized than they are currently, but closing the beds without other plans in place will simply put more people with SPMI in the homeless shelters and the prisons. I would urge the Governor and his staff to work with psychiatrists who are "on the front lines" to think up better options.

I've been informed that transmitting the URL for this petition using University of Iowa Outlook email is frowned upon as it's not to be used for "personal or political" purposes, given the sensitivity of the connections between the state government and the Regents for the state's universities. I didn't get any signatures until I contacted my colleagues by email. That said, I will not violate university policy again and you should check on the progress of this petition and my updates on the issue it represents on my blog site at http://thepracticalpsychosomaticist.com/. Just for the record, my personal and political purpose for this action is to attempt to improve access to inpatient psychiatric care for Iowans.

Just this second the signature counter is accurate at 65 signatures.

We need to have more inpatients psychiatric beds, not less.