Clients fear Valley Mental Health cutbacks will diminish their lives

Facing an $8 million to $10 million deficit, Valley Mental Health officials met face to face Tuesday with mentally ill clients frightened by the uncertainty of what lies ahead when their service system is pared back, delivered by a staff with up to 125 fewer employees.

The session took place in the basement cafeteria of Pathway to Recovery, a Salt Lake City transition facility that will be scaled down because of deficit-driven cutbacks.

There they saw faces that teared up in fear of losing an activity or a beloved staff member. They saw people who said their mental health treatments saved them from utter despondency. For some, treatment programs had empowered them to cope better with their illnesses, to make friends and to mix more easily into the overall community.

While listening to their questions, stories and suggestions for two hours, Valley Mental Health adult services director Jona Nusink Curry said several times that the individual examples of resiliency being recited were proof that the clients can endure whatever life throws at them -- like this transition -- and that they will benefit from a more-efficient service-delivery system.

"The things we're doing are good things," she said. "I don't feel that what we're proposing is a bad thing ... It really is about giving you better personal service. Help us know what you need, and we'll work to get those needs met."

There were plenty of skeptics among the crowd of 150 clients.

Three dozen lined up to comment about the still-nebulous changes that will go into effect Jan. 1. Several felt so passionately about the topic that they said they were, at that moment, fighting off the kind of anxiety attacks that mental health treatment had helped them to overcome.

"You tell us to go to the community. How can we do that when we have four to five panic attacks per day?" asked one woman.

Added another: "A lot of clients got real depressed since they came down here," she said, adamant about not wanting to lose her therapist. After Curry said one goal of the system was to free the woman from needing to see the female therapist regularly, the woman snapped back, "No. She's like family. I'm losing my eyesight. I have diabetes. I'm going downhill. This makes me mad."

Curry and Gary Baker, a Valley Mental Health area director, explained that fear and anger were legitimate feelings, part of the grieving process associated with change. But, they noted, Valley Mental Health officials have been looking for three years at altering the service-delivery system. The budget shortfall makes now the time to do it.

Curry said the agency is looking at having clients deal directly with a care coordinator who will help them set up an individualized care regime. If medications are needed, a plan to administer them will be set up. Therapy sessions can be scheduled, too. Crisis care will be available, along with partial hospitalization and wellness and recovery programs, Curry said.

But essential living skills groups will become classes, she added, and popular events such as ceramic or music classes, or weight-control clinics, may have to be led by a community volunteer or a mentally ill person serving as a peer leader. Licensed staff members don't really need to guide these activities.

But it's the potential loss of treasured staff members that concerned most speakers.

"It would be so chaotic with no teachers here," said one woman.

Decisions will be made by Dec. 1 about which 100 to 125 employees will be cut from Valley Mental Health's payroll of just over 1,000, Curry said. Then it will be more apparent how programs go forward starting Jan. 1.

mikeg@sltrib.com