Public mental health care in N.D. gets a 'D'

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The National Alliance on Mental Illness released its second report card evaluating each state’s public mental health care system — and only 14 states showed improvement in the past three years, the group said.

The report is a follow-up to the 2006 report to measure the progress, if any, states have made in improving public mental health care for adults.

North Dakota improved from an “F” to a “D,” the organization said, while Minnesota’s grade remained a “C.”

The nation’s average is a “D,” the same grade given in the 2006 report.

Diane Weros, North Dakota’s NAMI interim president, said slight progress is welcome, a press release stated.

“But you can’t applaud too loudly when a grade increases from an F to a D. There is a lot more work to be done,” she said in the release. “Not only do we need to look at what services we are providing, but we need to look at the quality of those services.”

She said that ongoing budgets cuts don’t help and that instead of cutting the mental health budget in North Dakota “we should be utilizing some of the surplus monies.”

The report card is based on 65 criteria, including health promotion, housing, family education and treatment services.

NAMI is a national grassroots organization for people with mental illness and their families. Founded in 1979, NAMI has affiliates in every state, according to their Web site, www.nami.org.

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