US has only 18 mental health beds per 100,000 people - Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz is live

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Doctor Eleanora mccantz Catz joins us not to talk about
what's happening with the mental health issues and more importantly,
how we're treating and working on helping mental illness in
this country. Doctor. Welcome in, Thank you for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Well, thank you, thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
What an amazing, alarming, crazy, unbelievably awful stat this is
there are only eighteen mental health beds for one hundred
thousand people in the United States. What is going on here?
We turned our back on the mentally ill, those that
are challenged with the mental disorders and mental I guess
waves in their life. I mean, it's just like we're
not doing much to help.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's really hard if you have serious mental illness to
get the healthy need today. And yes, that number of
hospital beds is very, very low, and that's compared to
the mid nineteen fifties where we had over five hundred
thousand such beds.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, when we talked too, yeah, yeah, I was just
going to say, I mean, there was a Bryce hospital
here in TUSCALALUSA, all in, just forty five minutes down
the road from where we sit right now. There was
a hospital there. That's the buildings still there. It's overgrown
with you know, flooding and water and vegetation. I don't
know why they even torn it down yet. But you know,

(01:13):
what happened in the fifties in these mental hospitals today's
standards probably not you know good, let alone illegal stuff
going on, the botomies and just putting people in rooms
and locking the doors. And it was an awful situation back.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Then, that's right. And because of that a bunch of
things happened. But because of that abuse, those hospital beds
were for the most part closed in our country. And
those kinds of things don't happen today. They couldn't happen today.
We've had laws put in place to protect people, but
we still have people with very serious mental health problems

(01:50):
that sometimes meet those beds, and when they do, they
usually can't get them.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
What do you think is that the core and the
center of the problem. And if the President brought you
to his cabinet room and asked you right there in
front of the entire cabinet, doctor, we want you to
come up with your three point bullet list of things
you would do to fix the mental health care that's
lacking in this country. Where do you start.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
We start with improving community services. So we want, we
want folks with mental illness to be able to live
with us in our communities, and they can do that
if they get the mental health care that they need.
Right now, that's very hard to do. So we have
a program that's called the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic Program.

(02:33):
During the first Trump administration when I worked in Washington,
we expanded that program a lot. That actually continued with
the previous administration as well, and in twenty twenty two
a law was passed that will fund those programs for
all states in the coming years. We need that in

(02:54):
place because those programs do outreach to the seriously mentally
ill and they provide them the kinds of services that
they just can't get today. But in addition to that,
sometimes people with very serious mental health problems will need
to have time in a hospital, right and so we
need more hospital beds as well, and we need more

(03:18):
practitioners to be able to provide services to people.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
We're really losing in this battle right now when you
see what takes place with the extreme cases where you know,
Burtle murdered people on subways, you know, just out of
the blue. A lot of homeless people struggle with mental illness.
A lot of people that are on their way to
work right now are struggling and aren't really getting the
help that they need. You know, I think the people

(03:43):
that get the help that they need is a smaller
group than there are that are mentally struggling that can't
get it. I think the few proportionately get it. Ain't
even some of those. It's tough to keep on your
meds or you don't want to do it. Oh I
feel better now, so I'll just taking my meds and
then you're back, you know, the vicious cycles. So is

(04:03):
it a money issue? Is it a funding issue or
is it a government issue? Should it be privately owned?
Is it something that communities should handle on their own?
Because you know it, you worked in government. You start
throwing a federal government and state governments into things and
controlling things, not all always goes the right way.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, that's right. But the reality is that most of
the folks that have the most serious illnesses they need
government supports, they need medicaid. Most of them will get
the supports for their healthcare at large, both mental health
and physical health care through the Medicaid program, and so

(04:42):
that program needs to use the funds that it's got
in a smart way so that Americans with the most
serious problems get the health care that they need.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah. Well, I think it's great that we're making this,
you know, more aware to people, and I appreciate you
coming on to share this with us. Yeah. We got
to do a better job in this country for sure,
for the benefit of all of us, you know, not
just the folks that are struggling. Thank you so much,
doctor Katz for what you do and appreciate you being
with me this morning.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Thank you