Our View The dangerous gaps in mental health care

The expanding list of American communities where innocent lives have been lost in horrific acts of mass violence now includes a city just down the road in Taunton. An 80-year-old woman and a 56-year-old man are dead, along with the mentally disturbed man who took their lives and stabbed several others. The seven victims were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We may never know what drove Arthur DaRosa, 28, of Taunton, to kill. His sister and father said that the troubled man — who they said had long battled depression — claimed that the devil was trying to make him do things. He had reportedly been admitted to the psychiatric unit at Morton Hospital on Monday, but was released, according to his family.

At a recent briefing in Milford, Rep. Joe Kennedy III heard a litany of woes from mental health providers and hospital staff about the many obstacles they face in trying to deliver the help those suffering from mental illness desperately need: Inadequate resources, poorly coordinated care, an underpaid and minimally trained workforce.

When families try to get their loved ones in a psychiatric crisis to seek help, the help they need is not always available. There are long wait times for children and adults to even get an assessment with a psychiatrist. According to the Association of Behavioral Healthcare, 58 percent of providers report a wait time of over a month for routine adult assessments. Some patients even have to wait up to a year for an appointment. Inpatient care at the hospital becomes the only route to treatment and there are only so many beds available.

This mental health care crisis has been developing for 25 years. The situation has only become more pronounced with the increased need for substance abuse treatment as a result of the ongoing opioid addiction epidemic, further taxing the inadequate behavioral health system. At a time when need is increasing, availability is decreasing due to fiscal challenges that are leading to service reductions.

Without adequate community-based outpatient care, emergency rooms and the limited amount of inpatient hospital psychiatric beds become overcrowded — which can lead to early discharge without proper after-care in place. ABH recommends better care coordination and partnerships with non-medical community resources in order to relieve this overcrowding. Sufficient Medicaid reimbursement rates for MassHealth patients are another important piece of the puzzle.

While our nation has spent trillions of dollars on military and security measures in an attempt to keep Americans safe from foreign and domestic terrorism threats, we have not invested nearly enough in the mental health services that could prevent the much more frequent violent acts carried out by mentally disturbed people in their own hometowns.

As we pray for the victims and their families, let us also work for long-overdue improvements to a woefully inadequate mental health safety net. It’s time to take action on improving access to mental health care before yet another nightmare that could have been prevented unfolds.

Originally published in the MetroWest Daily News.