Mental Health Patient Numbers Point to Urgent Care Need

After a months-long commitment to deploy one-time federal funding to build a mental health crisis facility as part of a $114 million county administration complex, the Board of Commissioners (BOC) suddenly voted 3-2 at its June 11 meeting to redirect the funding to a water treatment project.

District 1 Commissioner Kerry Hill, District 2 Alfred John (Chairman) and District 5 Laura Semanson voted against the facility. Hill claimed that a “state-operated mental health crisis center is not the most effective use of Forsyth County ARPA funds, as the facility would be open to people outside Forsyth County.” Commissioners Levent (District 3) and Mills (District 4) voted against the redirection. The county then invited the stakeholder group to present to the BOC on June 25.

“The Board pulled our only known source of [funding]…and did not give us a commitment for the amount we have to work with,” said mental health advocate and key stakeholder group member Mary Schaffer, vice president of the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). 
At the June 25 meeting, the county manager reviewed three possible concepts for developing a facility not far from the Northside Hospital in Cumming. All would require public private partnership funding, whereas the use of federal funds would not have.
Commissioner Mills presented statistics from Northside Hospital that illustrated how stark is the need for care: the number of residents in need of urgent mental health in the last two years alone, as recorded by the number of people brought to the hospital: 

• 65 involuntary mental health patients under 12 years of age
  
• 545 involuntary mental health patients aged 12-18
  
• 2,411 involuntary mental health patients above the age of 18
  

This is more than 3,000 residents in need of crisis help who arrive at the emergency room–or multiple people per day. When patients are sent to an ER room, no treatment is provided while awaiting transport to a crisis bed in another county. It is estimated half of all patients are not receiving the crisis stabilization care needed. 

Community stakeholders have worked for years to get the county to address the marked increase in residents suffering serious mental health problems. Without a county-centered crisis intervention facility, families and friends of loved ones are forced to drive hours to other counties in Georgia that offer both inpatient and outpatient crisis care. People who are suicidal or in crisis do not have the luxury of traveling hours for care. 
Currently, all members of the BOC are Republican. Two seats are contested by Democrats this November: District 4, Kat Jewell and District 5, Cary Green. View our Candidates page here.