The Galveston County Daily News

ALVIN — The Texas Legislature convenes today, and scores of Galveston and Brazoria County residents hope this session will undo some of the changes the last session brought to the state’s mental health system.

Every family dealing with a mental health issue has a story, and state legislators representing Galveston and Brazoria counties heard more than two dozen Thursday night at a legislative forum to discuss mental health issues.

There was the story about the girl who was sent home with her parents even after threatening to kill herself in front of the hospital charge nurse. There was the one about the bipolar teen who stabbed his grandmother in the arm. And there were repeated themes, such as waiting years for services, continual commitments and loved ones incarcerated.

With speaker after speaker, one aspect of the story was the same — it was a story of people with mental health problems who could not get help from the state.

More than 120 people packed Joe’s Banquet Hall in Alvin to ask elected officials to take their stories back to Austin.

The state effectively cut millions of dollars in social services for mental health and retardation with the passage of House Bill 2292, which went into effect in September.

Texas law already set 180 days as the maximum someone could be committed to a mental hospital. But with the funding cuts, access to hospitals, medication and treatment outside of hospitals has shrunk dramatically.

Galveston resident Kimberly Meadows told officials at the forum that handling her bipolar son with practically no help was affecting her ability to provide for her family.

“We’re on a lot of waiting lists for a lot of services,” she said. “I can’t keep a job because I’m constantly being called away to deal with him.”

State District Court Judge Susan Criss told attendees that the cuts left three long-term options for the mentally ill.

“They’ll end up in jail, in the emergency room or dead,” she said. “No one in our state has any bragging rights as to how we treat the mentally ill.”

Guidelines for who received mental health treatment even handcuffed people looking to improve their lots in life, said island resident Carolyn Karbowski, also the director of the Gulf Coast Alliance for the Mentally Ill. She said her adult son, both mentally ill and mentally retarded, was living on a street that later became occupied by drug dealers and a registered sex offender, all of whom saw her son as easy prey.

Karbowski said she was going to help her son find a house in a safer neighborhood but was told a nicer home would be a sign that he did not need to be on Medicaid, which paid for some of the expensive medicines prescribed for mental illness.

“We’re always fighting to keep what little we have,” she said.

After hearing the 28th and final speaker, state Rep. Craig Eiland said his sixth mental health legislative forum made him “frustrated and yet re-energized.”

Eiland said the only way the state Legislature would realize that a system without social services in the mental health arena actually cost Texans more would be for people throughout the state to let legislators hear about it.

“Keep doing your part, and others need to do their part,” he said. “Most of the inaction in Austin is out of ignorance, not out of a lack of caring.”

State Rep. Glenda Dawson of Brazoria County and state Sen. Kyle Janek also attended the forum and said they would take Thursday’s stories to the capital.

Among other elected officials in attendance were Santa Fe Mayor Robert Cheek, District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk and Galveston County Probate Judge Gladys Burwell, who handles all civil commitments for mental health in Galveston and Brazoria counties.

Burwell told the people at Thursday’s forum that while Galveston and Brazoria counties had representatives who understood the mental health needs in Texas, that would not create a statewide power base that could effect change.

“If you have friends in other parts of the state, call them, and get them to call their representatives, too,” she said.