Short Cuts Vs. Long Term Health

Once again, impending budget cuts threaten to undermine critical health and human services that so many of our poor and homeless guests depend on.  The impact will be shared across the spectrum of agencies that serve marginalized communities, with basic mental health and outreach services taking some of the biggest hits.  A few of the proposed cuts include:

Eliminating drop-in services at Tenderloin Health Resource Center, which currently serves 30 guests per day.

Closing Caduceus Outreach Services, which provides comprehensive psychiatric support and outreach to approximately 100 each year.

Closing the Tenderloin Clubhouse, a day treatment program for mentally ill Tenderloin residents.

All in all, these cuts will result in roughly 1,600 people being dropped from mental health treatment and a 46% reduction in capacity of San Francisco’s mental health system.

The proposed cuts may help solve some of our budget woes in the short-term, but in the long run they will only cost us more.  As mental health resources shrink, more people with mental illness will inevitably turn to emergency psychiatric care at SF General; those with acute mental illness often end up in jail.  Caduceus Outreach Services, one of the aforementioned potential victims of the budget crisis, estimates that it costs $200+ per hour to hold someone in involuntary psychiatric detention at San Francisco General Hospital‘s Psychiatric Emergency Services unit, or $34,675 to incarcerate one person in San Francisco County jail for one year.  The cost to provide restorative treatment and social support for one person in a place like Cadaceus: only $3,500 per year.

I understand the need to cut back in tough times.  But we have to find a way to balance the immediate fiscal demands of a budget in crisis with our city’s commitment to ensuring the long-term health of its residents, especially those most at risk for falling through the cracks.