(cross-posted from Vermont Watch blog, here)

*Updated* (see bottom of post)

Back in 2004, then State Senator Jim Leddy offered the following comments concerning the dreadful conditions of the Vermont State Hospital:

New England Psychologist

Suicide likely to delay plans to revamp Vermont State Hospital

(December 2004 Issue)

[…]

Legislators and others have expressed concern that the administration of Governor Jim Douglas is moving too slowly on the hospital planning initiative. “I suggest we have lost a year,” says Mental Health Oversight Committee co-chair State Sen. Jim Leddy (D-Chittenden) in remarks before the annual meeting of the Association for Mental Health. “I can’t imagine that for another population, another disability, we would take so long to figure out what we should do.”

[…]

[…]

Read the entire article, here.

That was then and, nearly six years later, the following op-ed submitted to area newspapers for publication is now (posted as is with direct permission and with thanks to Jim Leddy for thinking to send it my way; am including an excerpt from his note since it hits the nail on the head as usual):

[…] … The treatment of Vermonters with serious mental illness often exists below the radar screen. Hopefully this op-ed will help focus attention on a problem too long ignored.

[…]

–Jim Leddy 

Op-Ed by Jim Leddy:

Two Crises, One Solution

A Story of Priorities

Nearly eight months ago – October 16, 2009 – the Champlain Bridge connecting Chimney Point, Vermont and Crown Point, New York was abruptly closed because it was determined to be unsafe. Within two weeks Governor Jim Douglas of Vermont and Governor David Patterson of New York announced transportation alternatives, including free ferry and commuter bus service, to assist the many Vermonters and New Yorkers who travel every day to and from work across the Champlain Bridge. On January 14, 2010 – three months after the closing – the two governors announced the design for a new bridge, with the goal to have it open by the end of summer in 2011.

More than six years ago the federal government determined that the Vermont State Hospital was unsafe for mentally ill Vermonters, and revoked the hospital’s certification to receive federal Medicaid and Medicare funding.

Six years later: no new hospital, several failed efforts to regain federal approval, and still no federal funds. In these dire times with many cuts in state programs and services, the continuing loss of these funds will cost the State of Vermont an additional $9,700,000 in the next fiscal year, on top of the millions lost over the past six years.

I wonder if we would be in the same place if it were any other illness or any other hospital than the Vermont State Hospital for the Mentally Ill. The stigma of mental illness still lingers more than 10 years after Vermont enacted pioneering legislation requiring parity in coverage and services for people with mental health and substance abuse problems. It is hard to imagine that seriously ill patients with any other illness would have, as their only option, care in a dilapidated facility which does not meet federal standards. It is unfathomable to imagine that these patients and their families, not to mention their communities, would tolerate, much less accept such conditions in any other Vermont hospital.

But mental illness is different, I guess. Stigma lives on. Parity is a word, not a reality. And clearly not a priority.

A bridge fails. And eight months later there’s a plan, free ferries transport people back and forth across Lake Champlain, and Governors Douglas and Patterson break ground on a new bridge on June 11th. Where there’s a will,….

A hospital fails, and six years later it is still failing. For six years the State of Vermont has allowed failure to become the status quo. What’s different between these two pictures? What’s wrong with this picture? Priorities, it’s always priorities.

The recently adjourned Legislature did resolve to support a secure residential program in Waterbury, but this depends on receiving $10,000,000 from an uncertain federal Medicaid bonus payment. And the estimated cost for building this new facility is more than $15,000,000, with no plan of how the project would be completed. Still no new hospital.

For patients at the Vermont State Hospital, their plight often invisible, there is a sense of abandonment. There is also a sense of shame that the State of Vermont has allowed failure to win. So many challenges, so little change.

No more excuses, no more delays. If we can build a new bridge lickety split, we should be able to build a new hospital for some of our most vulnerable relatives and neighbors. It isn’t an either/or decision. Priorities. It’s always about priorities. Enough. It’s time. It’s long past time.

Jim Leddy, South Burlington

Retired Director of Howard Center, Former State Senator and Co-Chair of the Mental Health Oversight Committee

*Update*: In addition to his previous public service and for the sake of full disclosure, Jim Leddy is president of the Vermont chapter of AARP (AARP-VT) as well as having been recently appointed by Speaker of the House Shap Smith to the state Health Care Reform Commission; the latter of which is currently being challenged by Doctor Deb Richter of the group Vermonters for Single Payer. Read a report concerning such via Vermont Public Radio, here.