League of Women Voters
of Salina, Kansas

Mental illness affects 100,000 in Kansas
Local health center director offers views at Salina luncheon

David Clouston
Salina Journal

In Kansas, the community mental health system serves about 100,000 people, and about a fifth of those are children and adults with severe and persistent mental illnesses.

Pat Murray, executive director of the Central Kansas Mental Health Center in Salina, said mental illness nationally affects an estimated one in five families.

Murray and two other staff members from Central Kansas Mental Health spoke at a lunchtime program sponsored by the Salina League of Women Voters concerning their agency's history and the services it provides. About 30 people attended the luncheon.

Within the past 15 years in Kansas, institutionalized care of the mentally ill by state-operated and privately run for-profit centers has dwindled. Caregiving has fallen primarily to community mental health centers, Murray said.

Central Kansas Mental Health is one of 28 community mental health centers in the state. The Salina center serves Dickinson, Ellsworth, Lincoln, Ottawa and Saline counties.

In Kansas, subsidies and sliding fee schedules enable the mentally ill to get the treatment they need, not just the treatment they can afford, Murray said. There's never a denial of service for inability to pay.

The center does, however, generate 75 percent of its annual revenue from fees paid for services.

Beginning in 1990, community mental health reform took root in Kansas. Local services built up as hospital beds were reduced, leaving Larned and Osawatomie state hospitals as the two primary, in-patient care centers.

"There was a knowledge base also emerging that showed there were other services that would allow people with very serious illnesses, both youth and adults, to live in the community," Murray said.

The development of better drugs to treat mental illness also helped restore some to independent living, she said.

John Presley, Central Kansas' director of youth services, told the audience that home-based services are better for mentally ill children because they develop better in familiar circumstances.

With all the services available to help the mentally ill, it still often takes family members to foster treatment, Murray said.

"Families can do lots of things that professionals can't do," she said. "Families can coerce. Families can twist arms, make people go for treatment. Sometimes they can make people take medication."

• Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403, or by e-mail at sjdclouston@saljournal.com.