Joe Pickering Jr., Mary Barker and Jennifer Johnson know the challenges of caring for children with serious mental illness. Everyone believes there is help available through a three-letter acronym: PTP.
It stands for Maine‘s Progressive Treatment Program, which allows judges to order those with serious mental illnesses who are at risk of harming themselves or others to receive assisted outpatient treatment. The then governor. John Baldacci expanded the program in 2010 to allow police and medical providers to seek court-ordered treatment, rather than just the Dorothea Dix and Riverview state psychiatric hospitals in Bangor and Augusta.
Another expansion is needed in the form of additional federal funding and awareness of the law in Maine, according to Barker, Johnson, Pickering and other advocates who have spoken more frequently about the program since last year’s mass shooting in Lewiston.
Instead, that uproar led policymakers to tighten a “yellow flag” law that allows courts to temporarily take away guns from people deemed dangerous. Skepticism about expanding the Progressive Treatment Program comes from several influential corners, including disability rights advocates and the administration of Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat.
The debate illustrates the difficulty of finding consensus amid a complex web of mental health treatment rules. Maine and other states have struggled to build the community supports that were intended to reach the other side of the deinstitutionalization movement that emptied hospitals in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Progressive Treatment Program is an example of one such program. Patients in the program can live in a group home and receive regular check-ins from providers and therapists on how to manage their medications, keep appointments and avoid drugs.
The “National Coalition to Break the Silence” believes Maine could save lives and make more use of the program by seeking a waiver of a federal policy that prevents states from using Medicaid dollars to pay for patient care in institutions that have more than 16 beds.
Maine and 36 other states have similar waivers for substance use disorder treatment, but Maine is not among the 12 states, including New Hampshire and Vermont, with waivers for mental health treatment. A bill by Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, whose brother approved the expansion of the Progressive Treatment Program as governor, directed the Maine Department of Health and Human Services to apply for the federal waiver, but it was not funded in the budget. this year.
“We are allowing tragedy before treatment instead of treatment before tragedy,” said Pickering, whose son, Chris, died in an apartment fire in Bangor in 2020 at the age of 46. Chris Pickering led Bangor High School to the 1993 boys basketball state championship before going in and out of treatment for schizophrenia for years.
The 16-bed limit is intended to prevent problems associated with widespread institutionalization, but advocates argued that the policy discriminates against mental illness and prevents Maine from adding more beds to treat those at risk of harm. Opponents of Baldacci’s bill argued that many of Maine’s approximately 500 psychiatric beds are not in use.
“I talk to hospitals all the time. Some of them will say we have a physical bed, but we don’t have anyone to staff it,” said Disability Rights Maine Managing Attorney Mark Joyce.
Margaret Longsworth, director of clinical and mental health services at OHI, a Bangor-based nonprofit that helps people with disabilities and which had not taken a position on Baldacci’s bill, said few professionals in The community are trained in using the Progressive Treatment Program, but she added, “we’ve seen it do really good things for the people who are in them.”
“We don’t want anyone to be in a hospital longer than necessary, but they can’t be on the streets,” added Johnson, whose 50-year-old son is in a group home run by OHI after spending several years at Dorothea Dix, where he “ “His psychosis was so severe that he could barely walk and talk.”
The Mills administration did not take a position on the bill from Baldacci, who said he intends to reintroduce the waiver request next year that would require about $1.3 million annually in state funding and unlock about $3.6 million. in equivalent federal money.
Maine’s Office of MaineCare Services told lawmakers the state would also need $500,000 over five years for assessment and data tracking and recommended aligning any request with the substance use disorder waiver that expires at the end of 2025.
Mills did not respond to requests for comment, but Baldacci echoed advocates who said they believe the governor is “reluctant to support it because certain groups are concerned it is a return to institutionalization.”
As the country faces billions in annual costs to treat people with schizophrenia, Maine has nothing to lose by expanding the Progressive Treatment Program and eliminating federal bed limits, according to supporters who feel the program could have prevented violent acts perpetrated over the years by loved ones. some. About 61,000 adults in Maine suffer from serious mental illness, according to NAMI Maine.
“Later is better than never,” said former state Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, who co-sponsored the 2010 expansion.
Meanwhile, Pickering continues to fight for his late son. Johnson and Barker are grateful their children are in treatment. Barker’s son, 26, has schizoaffective disorder and lives in a group home in Belfast after spending years homeless and in prison before his mother found out in 2023 about the Progressive Treatment Programme.
“He really wants a job,” Barker said. “He really wants to have peace in his life and just have a normal life.”
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