DC closes its mental health clinics

From FOX-TV in D.C.:

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The District is shutting down its mental health clinics to cut costs, sending the mentally ill to private clinics instead.

Some patients worry the move will hurt the city's most vulnerable residents. By shutting down the city's six mental health clinics and privatizing services, the city expects to save up to $14 million.

Alfred Wilson, who suffers from bipolar disorder and depression uses the 32 K Street NE Clinic and the Southeast Clinic on Alabama Avenue SE. He says DC's public clinics saved his life and doesn't want to change doctors. He first realized he had a mental illness in 1999, while in Paris on a trip.

"Next thing I knew I was standing on the window ledge," he said.

Five years ago, after bouncing from doctor to doctor in privatized programs in Maryland, Wilson moved in with his mother in DC. He got into DC's public mental health clinics and finally got the help he needed. Now he's afraid if he switches to a private clinic things will get worse.

"I've seen people that have been in the system. They change the doctor and they actually slid backward," Wilson said.

The city already has 8,000 people in private care. Vanessa Dixon, with the Doctors Council representing staff at the clinics, says private clinics can't handle the influx.

"The city is trying to, buy bubble gum, glue and shoestrings patch together a system to make the system work," she said. In a statement a spokesperson for the District's Department of Mental Health said, "The District will save millions of dollars that can be used to help not just people with severe mental illness, but also people with untreated depression and anxiety disorders who are uninsured and can't afford care." The plan calls to shut down the public clinics by March 2010 and transition the 4,000 patients from those clinics into private care. Wilson has been there, and done that.

"The private thing didn't work for me. It was too scattered. Doctors are too busy," he explained. The city vows to monitor private clinics, but Dixon says consider its track record.

"They have a dismal record of oversight of contracts," Dixon said pointing the current problems at DC's Office of Technology. The city says it has a strong network of providers some with decades of experience in mental health care. Wilson worries they're sacrificing patients for money.

"This type of transition that I'm seeing now is just like they're trying to shove everybody out," said Wilson.