Cuts will deal blow to mental health system

If supporters of a new mental health sales tax were casting a TV ad supporting their cause, they’d hire Laurel White on the spot.

On a recent golden October afternoon, Laurel leans back in shorts and sunglasses on an outdoor bench outside her Spokane apartment, her blond hair pulled into a ponytail, and basks in the sun. She radiates happiness.

This bright, attractive 35-year-old — with a smile as gleaming white as a Crest commercial — couldn’t be a better advertisement for the benefits of a strong public mental health system. Eight years ago, she’d sunk to the lowest point in her life with bipolar disorder, which is also known as manic-depressive illness. She attempted suicide and wound up hospitalized.

Since then, with the help of a wide network that includes agencies such as Spokane Mental Health and Family Service Spokane, she climbed out of her despair and began to find the medications and the therapy that could help her function again.

Most recently, she worked as an assistant manager for a nonprofit apartment complex. Now she’s job-hunting again, confident she’ll find the right job.

It’s taken years, but finally she accepts her diagnoses of both bipolar and seasonal affective disorders, and the need for medication and counseling for the rest of her life.

“I can be a strong contributor to society,” she says, “but I do need help.”

Now it’s the agencies that have been part of her support system that require rescuing. A massive round of budget cuts have left them laying off therapists and closing programs. If nothing changes, another, larger round will take place Jan. 1, effectively reducing the county’s mental health system by $11.5 million within three months.

The reasons are as complex as those behind the tragedy in New Orleans: A distracted federal government, an out-of-the-loop state system and poor county management decisions.

These forces have combined to blow a whirling wind of destruction through the local mental health care system. Local agencies are already ending therapy with some clients and turning away others. Those who oversee all of this are watching the flood waters rise.

At the moment, federal and state help aren’t arriving. We’re going to have to slog through this mess on our own.

And that means voting for a modest sales tax increase on Nov. 8 that could restore at least $6 million a year.

Many others with serious mental illness — the state estimated there are 22,000 of them in Spokane County — seek the kind of successful care that Laurel White has received. They aren’t there yet. They frighten their families by running away or they wind up in jails and emergency rooms. Occasionally we read about them in the newspaper. And whether the stories strike us as bizarre — a naked man on the road with a cardboard sign saying “Sex Wanted” — or as serious as another “suicide by cop” threat, they are signs of the deep need for high-quality, well-managed mental health care in our community.

White, an A-student who finally graduated from Whitworth College two years ago, has struggled to maintain a job. On days when her illness sinks her low, she can resemble a completely different person. She finds work as a gardener or a house cleaner to get through those times.

But now she’s feeling strong again. She’d like to work for a nonprofit agency that helps others like her, or translate her new apartment management skills to a for-profit housing complex.

She’ll need to continue to see a psychiatrist like the one at Spokane Mental Health who helps manage her medications, and a counselor like the one at Family Service Spokane.

Both agencies foresee major cuts ahead without the new tax. The heads of neither can make absolute predictions about where they’d fall.

In the meantime, White is doing well. She now advocates for others with mental illness seeking state help and gives speeches to local groups.

Early on, she gave up the goal of a career in engineering. Boyfriends have disappeared as her moods roll over them. She’s decided never to have children — for fear of passing on genes that might cause bipolar disorder.

But out of that loss comes a new sense of meaning and purpose. “I’ve always thought if I’m going to have this illness, I want to use it to help other people,” White says.

She beams in the sunshine. It’s clear that bipolar disorder has struck one bright, articulate, generous woman.

“My name is Laurel,” she says. “It means victory.”