The High Cost of Cutting Mental Health

The costs of cutting state mental health budgets are extraordinarily high. Without treatment, more people will end up hospitalized, in shelters, on the street, in jail or dead.

Download our fact sheets for more about the consequences of inadequate treatment and the value of investing in treatment that works:

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Key Messages for Advocates

Having a consistent, memorable message is key to a successful advocacy effort. Use these messages as often as possible. Add your personal story or example that illustrates a key point.

The costs of cutting the state's mental health care system are devastating individuals, families and our communities.

Our state's mental health care budget crisis is everyone's problem and its solution is everyone's responsibility.

We must protect and strengthen our state's mental health care system.

The costs of untreated mental illness only gets shifted elsewhere -- to emergency departments, schools, police, courts and overcrowded prisons.

More Messages and Talking Points

Headlines

The Star-Ledger (New Jersey), 6/22: Patients, families relieved that Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital will stay open
The Bakersfield Californian, 6/18: Mental health cuts endanger patients, the public
The Charlotte Observer, 6/17: Treatment unit’s closing sparks outcry

Past Headlines

One in four adults experiences a mental disorder in any given year. One in seventeen adults has a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder.
One in 10 children has a mental health condition that causes significant impairment.
Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, three-quarters by age 24.
Despite effective treatment, there are long delays--an average of 10 years--from the onset of mental illness to treatment.
Racial and ethnic communities are less likely to receive needed mental health care and, when they do receive treatment, more likely to receive poorer quality of care.
Mental illnesses are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada for ages 15-44.
Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for America's youth ages 15-24.
Overall, we lose one life to suicide every 15.8 minutes. The vast majority have an undiagnosed or untreated mental illness.
About 20 - 25 percent of jail and prison inmates and youth involved with juvenile justice have a serious mental illness.
Twenty-six percent of homeless persons have a severe mental illness--over four times the rate of the general population.
An estimated 131,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. 45 percent of these veterans live with mental illness.
For people living with serious mental illnesses, life expectancy is 25 years less than that of other Americans.
People with schizophrenia die from heart disease, diabetes and other medical causes at a rate two or three times greater than the rest of the population.

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