Relaying the severe concerns within Tompkins County government and among its citizens about New York State’s proposed mental health services reorganization plan, Legislature Chair Martha Robertson has submitted comment to an Assembly committee that urges the State to preserve inpatient mental health services in the Southern Tier/Finger Lakes region.

In comments filed with the Assembly Standing Committee on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, Chair Robertson forwards a resolution passed this week by the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, and to be considered by the full Legislature on Tuesday, September 17, that calls upon New York State to refrain from closing the Elmira Psychiatric Center and Greater Binghamton Health Center next summer.

The State is asked to recognize the vital interests of the 1.5 million people in the 15 counties served by these facilities and to designate the region as a Southern Tier Region Office of Mental Health region under the plan, with a Southern Tier Rural Center of Excellence to serve the Southern Tier and portions of the Finger Lakes.  The State’s current proposal designates the nearest regional inpatient centers in Syracuse and Utica.

The Southern Tier Center “would maintain critical access to child, adolescent, and adult inpatient and community services, as an alternative to the exclusively ‘urban thruway’ model currently under consideration,” Chair Robertson states.  “It would preserve and enhance the quality care being provided by our local professionals who are unlikely to be able to move to one of the ‘thruway’ centers [and] would allow patients and their families to remain as connected as possible during the most intense and difficult times in their lives.”

Robertson communicates the example of experiences of a close family member, who lives out-of-state, as demonstrating the crying need for available and accessible inpatient mental health care.

The State’s plan would designate those in our region as “second-class citizens,” splitting up families at the worst possible time, Robertson maintains.  On behalf of the County, she urges that the Elmira Psychiatric Center and Greater Binghamton Health Center not be closed, and that families not be relegated “to a mental health system that makes their lives worse, at a time when they need help the most.”

The resolution passed by the Health and Human Services Committee, which has been forwarded to the Assembly Committee, calls the current Office of Mental Health plan “inadequate to meet the challenges of the most economically distressed part of the state, at a time when the need for mental health services is on the rise,” and expresses concern that the distance that families and service providers would have to travel will put a financial burden on both families and community resources, and will be likely to negatively affect treatment.

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