| Press Release |
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| October 6, 2004 |
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Governor's Mental Health Taskforce Report Released; State Agencies Begin Implementing Changes
Gov. Ted Kulongoski today applauded the work of a 21-member task force that he created last October to recommend how to strengthen the state's mental health system.
The report identifies mental illness as first among illnesses that cause disability in Oregon, and says it affects more than 175,000 Oregon adults and 75,000 children each year.
"This report will be an effective roadmap for state and local policymakers, advocates, families and others as we work to improve the lives of Oregonians with mental illness," Kulongoski said. “In addition to long-term strategies, the task force recommended actions we can undertake immediately to improve state services for Oregonians with mental illness. I am very pleased that the Department of Corrections and the Department of Human Services have moved forward to begin implementing some of these changes.”
The governor said two state agencies, Corrections and Human Services, have already started working on recommendations that don't require legislative authority.
The governor said Corrections is working to support recovery as a goal to reduce incarceration and recidivism while increasing public safety; pursuing pharmaceutical bulk purchasing to save money; examining a single forensic mental health facility for individuals who cannot be treated in the community; and working on implementing recommendations for pre-release planning.
The Human Services department, meanwhile, said it has begun work in more than a dozen areas including a long-standing commitment to recovery in the community and state hospitals; pursuing police crisis-intervention training to deal more effectively with people with mental illness, as exists in Portland; linking existing 24/7 mental-health community crisis response in all 36 counties with local law enforcement and county jails; developing standardized screening for mental illness in the adult and juvenile corrections systems; further expanding community placement options for discharged state hospital forensic patients, including 50 more that will become available in January; and ensuring that corrections inmates with mental illness have access to federal and state benefits (such as food stamps) to which they are entitled upon release.
The task force's co-chairs were Portland lawyer Jonathan Ater and Erinn Kelley-Siel, the governor's policy adviser for health and human services. Other members represented the Legislature, law enforcement, care and treatment providers, consumers, family members, psychiatric and other medical professionals, state agencies, Oregon State University, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the office of U.S. Senator Gordon Smith.
View the entire Mental Health Task Force Report
Media Contact:
Marian Hammond, 503-378-6169
Anna Richter Taylor, 503-378-6496
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