© 2024 All Rights reserved WUSF
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Campaign for Mental Health Money Launched

The Mental Health Association of Florida today launched a campaign to lobby lawmakers for more spending.
WMFE
The Mental Health Association of Florida today launched a campaign to lobby lawmakers for more spending.

A campaign launching this week highlights Florida’s lack of mental health funding.

The #ElectHealthFLcampaign is calling on Floridians to contact elected officials and ask for more funding. Depending on who you ask, Florida either ranks49thor50thin per-person mental health funding.

Either way, at $37 dollars per person, Florida spends one-third of what Mississippi spends and one-tenth of what Maine puts in. And last year, an investigation by the Tampa Bay Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune found that budget cuts and neglect at state mental hospitals led to 15 deaths.

Candice Crawford with the Mental Health Association said $1.1 million has been cut from two Central Florida behavioral health hospitals.

“These cuts result in the closing down of psychiatric beds in these hospitals,” Crawford said. “And Florida has experienced so many cuts and a huge influx in population. It’s incalculable how much we’re behind.”

The campaign is focusing on Florida House Speaker Steve Crisafulli of Brevard County. Crisafulli’s spokesman Michael Williams said his office hasn’t been approached about the proposal.

“It is curious that this group would only target one legislator from one chamber,” Williams wrote in an email. “Such actions tend toward a political motivation, rather than a genuine desire to find real solutions.”

From 2010 to 2014, lawmakers cut $140 million for mental health and substance abuse treatment, according to the Florida Community Health Action Information Network.

“We’re also seeing that among the half million adults with serious mental illness in Florida, only about 36 percent receive treatment,” said Sita Diehl, director of state policy with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “That’s just two thirds of the national average. And for a major state like Florida, that’s a national disgrace.”

-- Reporter Abe Aboraya is part of in Orlando. receives support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Copyright 2016 WUSF Public Media - WUSF 89.7

Health News Florida reporter Abe Aboraya works for WMFE in Orlando. He started writing for newspapers in high school. After graduating from the University of Central Florida in 2007, he spent a year traveling and working as a freelance reporter for the Seattle Times and the Seattle Weekly, and working for local news websites in the San Francisco Bay area. Most recently Abe worked as a reporter for the Orlando Business Journal. He comes from a family of health care workers.
You Count on Us, We Count on You: Donate to WUSF to support free, accessible journalism for yourself and the community.