Mental Illness

[dixie]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

Hi, dixielady. I am sorry that the nonprofit agency in your area (I am assuming it was a community mental health center?), closed its doors.

The county is responsible for its residents and so the people who were going to that center, must have gone somewhere?

I assume that you either have Medicaid, or are uninsured?

If you have Medicaid, you can call them/look online, and they will give you a list of providers in your area. Medicaid actually pays better than most private insurances (for outpatient mental health treatment), so you should be able to find private practitioners in your area that do take Medicaid.

If you are uninsured, the county/NC has to supply you with something, or approve you going to another county. What did the people at Health and Social Services tell you? If you have a Mental Health and Hygiene Department, check them out. Otherwise, contact Health and social services again and push the issue. Again, the clients from the agency you went to have to be getting services somewhere (otherwise the hospitals would most likely have had a very significant increase in admissions since 6/2009 and you would have heard about it)...many of these people probably receive services from Health and Social Services as well, so that organization must know something. :-(

Good luck to you. I'm sorry this has happened.

Thank you.

The agency I went to was a private nonprofit. My county doesn't seem to offer any type of mental health program, or none that I can find anyway. At the social services (DSS) offices, they claim they have never heard of such programs. At the actual health department, they claim they don't treat such things.

I am uninsured still. When I lost my job my son was able to get NC Healthchoice (which is similar to Medicaid) but for some reason I don't qualify. Or at least, I do qualify but I would have to pay $2000 out-of-pocket before it would pay anything. Kinda seems pointless to me. If I'm going to pay a couple grand on my own, I might as well pay it all, ya know?

I will keep searching and keep harassing my county until I figure something out...

Thanks to everyone for the help and advice though. I really appreciate it.

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by dixielady

Thank you.

The agency I went to was a private nonprofit. My county doesn't seem to offer any type of mental health program, or none that I can find anyway. At the social services (DSS) offices, they claim they have never heard of such programs. At the actual health department, they claim they don't treat such things.

I am uninsured still. When I lost my job my son was able to get NC Healthchoice (which is similar to Medicaid) but for some reason I don't qualify. Or at least, I do qualify but I would have to pay $2000 out-of-pocket before it would pay anything. Kinda seems pointless to me. If I'm going to pay a couple grand on my own, I might as well pay it all, ya know?

I will keep searching and keep harassing my county until I figure something out...

Thanks to everyone for the help and advice though. I really appreciate it.

I'm sorry, dixielady, you did say nonprofit. The State (MD) that I worked in changed all of our community mental health centers into private, nonprofit agencies in the mid-'90's, so I went to right to that in my head.

I looked up Medicaid in your State: http://www.dhhs.state.nc.us/dma/medi...sicmedelig.pdf. If you look at page two it talks about eligibility requirments and the deductible that you speak of, which is based on your income. This should give you an idea as to how they made that determination (and you can check their work!)

Check out this link: http://www.dhhs.state.nc.us/mhddsas/lmedirectory.htm

It is for North Carolina's Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Abuse Services. Choose your county and make the call. If you cannot find your county on the list, for some reason, call the closest one and ask them who to call.

I wish you luck. I know that the "system" can be frustrating and overwhelming. Also, people don't always take the time to explain it all to residents. If you would like, you can PM me and I can make phone calls to find out information for you. Since I am working from a place of general knowledge about how our government entitlement programs work, it would not be too hard for me, and I have no problem "pushing people" to get what others are entitled to/need.

I just hate to see you not get what you need due to people not being helpful to you. It makes me angry when I hear of government agencies "shooing people away", when it is their job to do just the opposite.

Take care.

[Andrew, Jr.]

I hate to see this. Another example of how people fall thru the cracks who need help here in America. This is why I am all for universal healthcare coverage. Everyone should have it. I would not mind paying higher taxes to see that everyone was covered. I also would like to see the people who are at the highest income brackets pay a lot more towards this.