In 2011, Pennsylvania made a promise. Everyone living in a psychiatric state hospital would come home.
The promise was a transformed mental health system, where getting care for depression, or bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia would be like getting care for bronchitis, or lupus, or cancer.
But tucked within that plan was a dire warning against a darker future for people with severe mental illnesses should the commonwealth fail: homelessness, unemployment, relapse, and incarceration.
It is this premonition, not the promise, that has become reality in Pennsylvania.
Thirty years of choices by seven governors, hundreds of legislators, and countless local officials have delivered us to this moment, where thousands of Pennsylvanians with serious mental health conditions face impossible choices instead of easily accessible care.
For over two years, reporter Danielle Ohl has followed this issue, and collected stories from families, health care providers, social workers, and others – far more than could fit in her published stories.
Spotlight PA empowered these people to tell you in their own words how the state’s failure directly affected their lives on July 30 at a live storytelling event at Scranton’s Albright Memorial Library.
View the entire event here:
This event is supported by the Pulitzer Center.
What: Spotlight PA hosted a live storytelling event and panel on Pennsylvania’s mental health systems. Special guests who have experience with the state’s systemshared their perspectives. The event also featured a panel of experts to discuss how we got here and what the future of mental health care in Pennsylvania might hold.
Host: Danielle Ohl, Spotlight PA’s justice reporter, who has been covering the intersection of mental health and the criminal justice system for more than three years.
Expert panelists included:
Joan Erney, former deputy secretary of the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services
Molly Candon, PhD, Asst. Professor at the Penn Center for Mental Health.
Louis Bianco, registered nurse and peer specialist, program director of NAMI Perry and Cumberland Counties
Storytellers included Pennsylvanians from York, Allegheny, Lancaster and Philadelphia with experience as parents, advocates, and patients navigating Pennsylvania’s mental health system.
Resource tables included Scranton Counseling; Disability Rights Pennsylvania; and NAMI Northeast Pennsylvania.