State looking for guidance on mental health issues

By KAYLEY MENDENHALL, Chronicle Staff Writer

State health officials visited Bozeman Wednesday to hear concerns about mental health services as they prepare for the next legislative session.

"We need you guys to tell us what's working in this community and what's not," said Ed Amberg, administrator of the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs and facilitator of the meeting. "These meetings have been very important for us to take these million-dollar programs down to the local level."

The Bozeman meeting was one of nine held in cities across the state. Local mental health providers, drug and alcohol prevention specialists and family members of mental health patients attended the meeting.

Amberg began by explaining how the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services Addictive and Mental Disorders division works, including recent staff and program changes. In the past year, children's mental health services were separated out of the division because of a legislative mandate.

That division concerned some meeting participants.

"Whenever a child is diagnosed as being seriously, mentally disturbed, the integrity of the whole family, the marriage, is threatened," said Tom Peluso, a local mental health advocate. "The best way to deal with that family is to treat the parents and try to keep that family together."

By separating adult and children's services, Peluso said, he's worried the system is too fragmented. And Becky Robideaux, an alcohol and drug prevention specialist in Gallatin County, said the same is true when treating alcoholic parents.

"We need to be addressing kids. They are our next substance abusers," she said. "Kids that come in with MIPs, their parents are using a lot in most situations."

The state Addictive and Mental Disorders division works on both mental health and substance abuse issues, because in many cases the two problems are tied together.

But Eric Szemes said even that tie in services is a concern.

"I have a family member who is chronically, mentally ill with bipolar disease," Szemes said. "One of my concerns is how much chemical dependency and medical disorders are funded out of the same pot for the chronically, mentally ill."

The lack of a local facility for mentally ill patients in crisis is another concern for Szemes, who said sending patients to Warm Springs may not be as helpful as treating them in their home towns.

"We are very aware in this community that we have a need for a crisis facility," Peluso said. "The Legislature has seen the need for this. It hasn't happened yet, but folks are working on it."

Many in the room agreed that mental health and addictive problems could be addressed better at the local level if groups worked together to take charge rather than waiting for state guidance.

"We have to stop relying on the state to tell us where to go and how to do it," said Roger Curtiss, an alcohol treatment specialist. "We have to do it."

Kayley Mendenhall is at kmendenhall@dailychronicle.com

Reader Comments