Roy Exum
We hardly need to look further than Dallas or Baton Rouge to find substantiated proof there are some severely mentally ill people among us. Anybody who would purposefully shoot and kill a police officer is no doubt a villain but those of us who weep as we try to understand will readily concede such murderers are mentally deranged. How can they not think of the families and children who will never be the same?
In Chattanooga our mental illness is apparent every day. From an over-zealous panhandler to a man now banned from CARTA buses, our police and social workers deal with these types every day. Yet when one study suggests we have a mere 45 percent of the psychiatrists and psychologists we need in our community, the very idea HCA would try to block a proposed $25 million mental-health facility by Erlanger is slap crazy.
The Hospital Corporation of America is one of the nation’s largest private hospital chains. Based in Nashville, there are constantly mixed reviews on performance, ranking from a $16.5 ethics settlement in 2014 to the persistent claims Parkridge will ship a heart-attack victim with Blue Cross insurance to Erlanger before the EKG can be read.
HCA has hardly any indigent costs in the Chattanooga market with Erlanger turning no one away – i.e., private versus public – but HCA desperately wants the insurable mental health traffic and Erlanger threatens to upset the niche apple cart. HCA will complain there are enough beds in Chattanooga already when, realistically, that is hardly the case as any visitor to the Erlanger ER on a weekend night can attest.
When our police departments pick up a suspect acting erratically, it depends on which kind of erratic. If it is criminal erratic, the suspect is booked at the county jail where Sheriff Jim Hammond – quite conservatively, mind you – will admit over 20 percent of those in the overcrowded county lock-up have mental conditions. Unfortunately, there is nowhere else to put them, which is yet another telling tale on today’s society.
If a suspect does not commit a crime, yet may be found singing something like the theme song to Dr. Zhivago while standing bare naked and holding a bouquet of wilted roses in the Fireman’s Memorial Fountain on Georgia Avenue, the heart-broken cops will wrap the obviously sick soul in a blanket and take them to Erlanger.
There, the ER doctors will properly sedate the “patient” and keep them “comfortable” until Erlanger social workers can find a bed in a mental facility. Add this: when Erlanger’s census is maxed, there is little room for the mentally impaired, but the hospital must keep the patient – who is sick indeed – because once again there is nowhere else to put them.
You are going to argue there are already enough beds. Please, I don’t mean to make light of a naked Dr. Zhivago singer but this is actually what happens. A family brings a mother so severely depressed she can no longer talk, a man brings his wife who is so confused by Alzheimer’s she is determined to commit suicide – the list goes on. And, in your wildest dreams, do you think the white gloves at Parkridge are going to roll out the welcome mat?
Candidly, HCA’s Valley Psychiatric Hospital – now called a more politically correct “Valley Hospital” – is a prize. In my lifetime I have known both those who do yeoman’s service there and many in-patients who have had storied results. We need “Valley” desperately but what about the indigent? Look in the “want ads” any day and you’ll see where Moccasin Bend will hire darn near anything with a steady breath as a “mental tech.”
If you don’t think there are different levels of mental-illness care, start with select readings of Charles Dickens. Many years ago, when the state wanted to close Moccasin Bend, I was assigned a huge front-page story that turned out pretty graphic and helped earn a reprieve. While I was there, I was escorted to a small building some distance from the main hospital where the “sickest” were kept, including four murderers who were guests via court-found insanity. It was one of my most vivid life experiences.
Mental illness – from depression like I freely admit I work to control to the most perverse behavior that you cannot possibly imagine – is as real as a moonlit night. I personally believe, with babies being born to heroin-addicted mothers and the opioid epidemic still unchecked, our nation’s mental state is going to get worse and now is the time we should be pouring billions into provable wellness programs.
America’s answer to mental illness is so far wrong it will take years to get it right. It is everywhere we look - in our armed forces, on our college campuses, even in our churches where, in a recent kiddie porn crackdown in Knoxville, two ministers of different denominations were among 29 who were lassoed. You scream, “That’s sick!” and, bingo, you are clinically correct.
But for HCA to even attempt to block Erlanger’s $25 million facility – that won’t cost the taxpayers a dime – is absolutely crazy. It will provide 200 jobs, will help stifle a belief that there aren’t enough mental professionals for over 50 percent of our population, and – most importantly – provide a place some of our very, very sick can be treated.
Forget your flimsy bottom-line analysis, this is one of the right things we must do.
royexum@aol.com