Positives of ‘Diversion Services’

No person with a mental health diagnosis wishes hospitalization for themselves, just as no one wants to be sick. Hospitalization is intrusive and disruptive to a person’s personal and professional life. Not only is it costly, but for the mentally ill the recovery time is computed in weeks, rather than days. Hospitalization can therefore be fatal to employment and relationships, thereby making it much longer for life to “return to normal.”“Diversion Services” was a concept initially championed by the peer movement of consumers of mental health services to mean “alternatives” to inpatient hospitalization.In Dutchess County, the powers-that-be created a state-run facility in Hyde Park known as “The Alliance House,” which alongside a partial-hospitalization program acts as a diversion from full-time hospitalization. Furnished like a home (rather than a hospital setting), The Alliance House provides temporary stabilization in a supervised community setting for those consumers of services in minor distress, or in the final weeks of their recovery. This in turn frees up expensive hospital beds for the next person in need. Others in need of more long-term care report to Hedgewood, a state-run assisted living facility in Beacon.This transitional system is a welcomed change — and cheaper — from the past practice where a patient stayed in the hospital for a month to six weeks at a time. Instead, patients transferred to the Alliance House or Hedgewood report to county-provided wellness programs at partial hospitalization or PROS (Personalized Recovery-Oriented Services), and then can return to The Alliance House at night. Unlike the hospital, patients can keep a cell phone on them and come and go as they please, so long as they are back before curfew. This allows them to reintegrate into society more easily, and is less disruptive to their life than month-long hospitalizations.Like inpatient hospital beds, Alliance House beds are scarce, largely due to funding sources. In this cash-strapped economy further challenges are on the horizon. An early proposal for the county Department of Mental Hygiene suggests a defunding of the county’s three partial hospitalization programs in the 2013 County Budget. To do so would eliminate even further the available outlets to divert someone in crisis.With Hudson River Psychiatric Center now closed, inpatient hospital bed reductions at St. Francis Hospital and possible closure threats to partial hospitalization on the horizon, let us hope the county retains a sufficient mental health safety net in place. If not, the default safety net will become law enforcement with the county jail as the catch-all depository for the mentally ill who cannot find medical help anywhere else.Michael N. Kelsey represents the people of Amenia, Washington, Stanford, Pleasant Valley and Millbrook in the Dutchess County Legislature. Write him at KelseyESQ@yahoo.com. View the Part 1 of this essay at blog.votemikekelsey.com.