The Mississippi Legislature created the Coordinator of Mental Health Accessibility position in 2020, tasked with these duties:
- To perform a comprehensive review of Mississippi’s mental health system.
- To analyze and review the structure of the mental health system.
- To review the adequacy and quality of the individualized supports and services provided to people discharged from the state hospitals.
- To review the quarterly financial statements and status reports of the individual community mental health centers.
- To consult with the Special Master appointed in the United States v. Mississippi ruling and a wide range of other stakeholders, including the Monitor in the same lawsuit.
- To determine where the delivery or availability of mental health services is inadequate in any county or geographic area within a county.
- To determine whether each community mental health center has sufficient funds to provide the required mental health services.
- To report on the status of the mental health system quarterly.
Bill Rosamond was appointed to the Coordinator position on October 15, 2020. His office recently released its monitoring report for October – December 2022.
The report covers these topics:
- The 988 Crisis Response System
- Crisis Residential services
- State Psychiatric Hospitals’ capacities and admissions
- Follow-Up to Recommendations in Third Quarterly Report
- Mental Health Region 11 Updates
- Community Mental Health Center Workforce Salaries
- Recommendations from the Coordinator’s Office
Report highlights:
- The Mississippi legislature passed legislation to oversee and coordinate the “988” system. Mississippi crisis line workers have responded to over 18,000 calls each of the past two years. In-state responders answer more of Mississippi’s calls than many other states that rely on out-of-state operators. There is not yet data on how helpful callers say their experiences were.
- The Mississippi mental health system has fourteen crisis stabilization units (CSUs) throughout the state, with 181 beds for adults in mental health crisis. The staff of the Office of Mental Health Accessibility found that for every 100 people admitted to a CSU, 83 were turned away. Reasons a CSU did not admit a given person include: the CSU was full, the person was considered too violent or to need a higher level of care, there was not enough staff, the person was medically unstable, the person had substance use issues or the person had inappropriate sexual behaviors. The report offers suggestions to standardize admission procedures and partner with different groups to address needs.
- The report summarizes state hospital admissions and describes them as returning to pre-COVID levels.
- The report describes the current status of the consolidation of Region 6 and Region 1 in the mental health system.
- The report summarizes multiple efforts to address Region 11’s fiscal instability and encourages the region to develop a single point of entry using a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT).
- The report provides an overview of salaries in the mental health system. Executive directors’ salaries range from $74,000 to $381,925, and salaries for bachelors-level employees range from $27,130 – $47,133, with other positions falling in between.
The report concludes with recommendations, including:
- “The OCMHA Best Practices committee, the Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers, and DMH should create a workgroup of state hospital staff, CMHC staff and other parties (local hospitals) to do the following:
- Create MOUS between crisis units and local hospitals to create a solution for individuals needing medical treatment.
- Explore reasons why people were not admitted and identify solutions for persons who meet criteria for admission.
- Explore admission policies and procedures and identify reasons persons were not admitted.
- Explore impact of workforce shortages and identify solutions for workforce training, recruitment and retention.
- Create a direct path to provide services to persons with substance use disorder as these individuals may be at high risk for imminent harm due to overdose.
- Create a direct path to provide brief intervention and referral to treatment for persons in crisis.
- Other issues identified by the workgroup.
- Region 11 should partner with local law enforcement to create and sustain CITs and establish formal MOUS between the CMHC and all law enforcement officers for all counties in the service region.
- Create single points of entry for Adams county as well as all for all other counties in the regions for persons referred by CITs.”
We appreciate the recommendations and information in this report. We urge that any recommended committees include all stakeholders, especially those receiving mental health services and their families. It would also be helpful to include people with lived experience who have had both positive and negative experiences with CITs.
We encourage you to read the full report. If you have questions or feedback for Mr. Rosamond, you can reach him at bill.rosamond@dfa.ms.gov or 601-359-3402.
You can read past reports and look for future reports by going to the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration’s website and hovering over Quick Links at the top. Click on DFA Legislative Updates and then choose the report of interest in the options.
