I remain a strong son of the South, the product of a Mason-Dixon marriage (Mom from Hoover, a suburb of Birmingham, Dad and the Crane family hailing from upstate New York). Though admittedly our region has had its errors in judgment, governance, and once strong and now longstanding racial prejudices, we still have a long way to go. Steady progress comes with good leadership and sound public policy, at both local and state levels.
At one point during the 1960s, at the nearly 1,800-acre campus of Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, the state of Georgia had the nation’s largest asylum and sanitorium facilities with a residential patient/client population of nearly 12,000.
This isn’t a bragging point.
In 1960, the population of Georgia was 3.94 million. Georgia’s current population is closing on 11 million.
During Jimmy Carter’syears as governor (1971-‘75), Georgia began to follow the federal trend of de-institutionalizing the mentally ill, initially moving 9,000 patients into community-based settings, possibly closer to family and friends. The president and First Lady Rosalyn Carter created the Community Service Boards (CSBs) that still work in this area today.
But mental illness did not vanish; we simply closed the facilities where most were treated.
Against a backdrop of rising forms of various mental illnesses, alcohol, and drug addiction, and skyrocketing rates of suicide among veteran and teen populations, the public demands more resources be devoted to assisting some of the most mentally fragile among us.
Mental illness and addiction are quite real, though perhaps not always as evident in terms of external symptoms such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes ... all among the leading killers in modern American society. However, left untreated, mental disorders can be just as deadly. While previously serving as manager for Forsyth County,
Kevin Tanner was appointed Georgia Commissioner for Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities by Governor Brian Kemp. Tanner had previously chaired the Behavioral Health Reform Commission in 2019, as well as served four prior terms in the Georgia State House. Tanner has a total of nearly 32 years in public service.
In his present role, Tanner has taken a barnstorming bus tour of Georgia, making county-by-county stops to visit with community leaders, healthcare practitioners, and the public in need of additional support and assistance.
What Tanner learned from listening on the road is the critical wage gap for clinicians and staff at all levels in the mental and behavioral health arenas.
Whether in private or public sectors, in-patient or out-patient treatment centers and facilities, an M.D. treating mental illness or a nurse assisting a client in a detox, crisis, or recovery center, is almost guaranteed a decidedly lower wage or salary range than their peers in a general hospital, medical or specialty practice.
As existing physicians, nurses (RNs and LPNs), and clinical staff have retired and aged out of these professions in mental health care, few others have been willing to step up and step in behind them, in part due to the financial sacrifice that follows this line of public health service.
“If we don’t get the workforce problem solved first, we will never make serious progress in helping the people who need us most,” Tanner said in a recent interview about his plans and requests for the next session of the Georgia General Assembly.
Tanner outlined the need for more in-patient treatment beds, upgrades of existing facilities (at what’s left of Central State and elsewhere), as well as an all-new campus environment and facility to promote the kind of wellness and treatment options in mental and behavioral health generally not currently available in Georgia.
The Georgia Mental Health Parity Act was a good start but attempts last session to expand on that work failed in the state senate on Sine Die in 2023.
But as Tanner warned, now is the time to make investments in bringing Georgia back to a position of equity, if not leadership, in providing services and support for those in need, while also encouraging the private sector to make similar investments. We all need to do more.
In a better or different time, I might still have a younger brother who didn’t lose the battle with his addictions or a mother who did not spend decades fighting debilitating bouts of depression.
Ask any family that has faced down some of these demons and they will tell you the challenges are very real. And only until very recently, help for many has not been on the way. Thankfully, hopefully, thanks to Tanner and his team, the times are finally a-changin’.