Panel Criticizes Cutbacks in Aid for Mentally Ill

Federally supported mental health services have suffered crippling cuts in staff and dollars during the Reagan administration, and the programs should be restored to pre-1981 levels or higher, a bipartisan House committee says in a report released Sunday.

The report, issued by the Government Operations Committee, says the government is spending billions of dollars a year on mental health services that often are fragmented, inappropriate, ineffective or desperately lacking.

The committee also accused the Office of Management and Budget of dictating a staff cut of 88% at one mental health division and says the budget-writing agency must not be allowed to set staffing levels.

The report did not give the current total federal expenditure on metnal health services, which are provided by a variety of programs. Nor did it give a total for pre-1981 spending.

‘Short-sighted, Wasteful’

Rep. Ted Weiss, D-N.Y., chairman of the human resources and intergovernmental relations subcommittee that investigated the issue, said it was “the first time that a very diverse bipartisan congressional panel has issued such a critical report on the federal role in providing mental health services.”

He called Reagan administration policies “shortsighted and wasteful.”

In an addendum to the report, committee Republicans said they “strongly agree” that the federal government plays an important role in preventing and treating mental illness and said many of the problems identified in the report are due to a lack of federal dollars.

The report said nearly 29 million Americans are victims of a mental illness that requires professional treatment. Since the 1960s, the trend has been to treat patients in community rather than institutional settings, but the report found “a desperate lack of community services” for the most severely mentally ill.

Although 75 % of the services for the mentally ill are provided in the community, the report said, only 30 % of federal expenditures on the mentally ill go to outpatient services or community support.

The government was spending $606 million for community mental health services under its largest program dedicated solely to mental health services in 1980, the committee report said. The amount decreased 14 % to $519.4 million the next year and another 18 % to $428.1 million in 1982.

The amount had risen this year to $643 million -- still 30 percent below the 1980 level when inflation is considered, the report said.

At the National Institute of Mental Health, a community support program designed to encourage the provision of housing, job training and social services as well as treatment for the mentally ill has won wide praise but is severely under-funded, the committee said. Each state receives about $130,000 a year -- about half the recommended level.