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 long-fading 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 1800-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's years as Governor of Georgia (1971-1975), Georgia began to follow the federal trend of de-institutionalizing the mentally ill, initially moving 9,000 patients into community-based settings, where possible closer to family and friends. Carter and First Lady Rosalyn Carter created the Community Service Boards (CSBs) that still work in this area today. Mental illness did not vanish, we simply closed the facilities where most were treated.
Against a backdrop and rapid rise of various forms of mental illness, 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 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...among the leading killers in modern American society. However, left untreated, these maladies can be just as deadly.
Georgia's Commissioner for Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, Kevin Tanner, is a man on a mission. Tanner was appointed to the position by Governor Brian Kemp while serving as Forsyth County Manager and he had previously chaired the Behavioral Health Reform Commission in 2019, as well as serving four prior terms in the Georgia State House. Tanner has a total of nearly 32 years in public service. In his current 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 has 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 the 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, there have been few 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," said Tanner in a recent interview on his plans and ask for the next session of the Georgia General Assembly.
Tanner outlined the need for more in-patient treatment beds, upgrades of existing facilities (at 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 here in Georgia.
The Georgia Mental Health Parity Act was a good start, and attempts last session to expand on that work failed in the State Senate on Sine Die in 2023. As Commissioner Tanner warns, 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, as well as 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 did not 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 that the challenges are very real, and until only very recently for many, help has not been on the way. Thankfully, the times are finally a changin'. Godspeed to Commissioner Tanner and his team.
