Journal-News.com

HAMILTON — State and local mental health agencies are reeling from recent cuts in state funding and bracing for another hit as Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland shoehorns together a historically tight budget.

Terry Royer, executive director of the Butler County Mental Health Board, said the state already has stripped more than $1 million from his budget and may cut up to $2.5 million more as part of a possible $60 million reduction to the Ohio Department of Mental Health.

This is the third largest reduction of any state agency, Royer said, behind massive cuts at the Department of Aging and the Ohio Department of Agriculture. And he thinks Strickland is going back on his pledge to hold health care harmless in his budget reductions.

"Mental health care is health care," Royer said. "When my consumers are sick they go to the hospital, they are treated with medication, and they are treated by physicians in the community."

That is the argument mental health advocates, such as the National Alliance for Mental Illness, will deliver to state lawmakers as they take apart Strickland's budget.

Sally Fiehrer, executive director of NAMI of Butler County, said the cuts could ultimately increase homelessness, emergency room visits and suicides.

"This population is fragile to begin with, and you start cutting basic services and you're going to get people who fall through the cracks," Fiehrer said.

Royer said his agency can weather the cuts in the short-term, largely with help from a levy that narrowly passed in 2005. But he fears that reduced funding in the long-term will force him to either cut programs or ask voters for more money when the levy expires next year.

"We will do as we have done in the past, try to maintain services," he said.

The Mental Health Board has embarked on several programs in recent years, including a $600,000 joint initiative with Butler County Elderly Services to provide mental health services to seniors.

Other new programs likely will take a back seat if funding is cut. "There is still a lot more need out there that I'm not going to be able to meet," Royer said.