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Since the late 1970s, when Virginia began its campaign to de-institutionalize the mentally retarded and mentally ill, some 9,000 patients have been released from state hospitals, according to Jo Gorman, executive director of the five-county Rappahannock-Rapidan Community Services Center.
Where have these people gone? All too often, they’ve returned to communities ill-equipped to take on the responsibility for providing necessary services, Ms. Gorman told the Rappahannock supervisors, asking the board for a resolution calling on Governor Gerald Baliles to hold firm to his commitment to provide an additional $42 million for mental health and mental retardation in the budget he will present to the General Assembly in January.
The appropriation supported in the resolution is to come from the statesurphis built up primarily as the result of recent revisions in the federal tax system. “This does not call for an increase in local match dollars,” Ms. Gorman emphasized. Rappahannock is not being asked for more than the $2.74 per capita it now gives for mental health, mental retardation and substance abuse. “But we need more money to provide local services to those who have been de-institutionalized,” Ms. Gormansaid.
1 She explained that state dollars for mental health and mental retardation services are still split 84 percent to state hospitals and 16 percent to localities, the same formula in effect in 1968 before the de
93.8%