Senator Deuell Discusses State Mental Health Issues at Chamber Luncheon

08-07-2012

Denise Bell
Post Managing Editor

Last Thursday Texas State Senator Bob Deuell was the Keynote Speaker at the August Chamber of Commerce Membership Luncheon and provided members with an interesting perspective on the mental health industry across the State of Texas.

Always an interesting speaker, Senator Deuell, began by stating, “I’d like to thank every one for coming out on this hot day and I want to introduce Linda Kady and Jeannie Hill from our Mesquite office. They have been with me almost the whole ten years.”

Discussing the duties of the Texas State Senate, he said, “What we do for those of you that don’t know. First of all we are not meeting right now. The Texas Legislature meets every other year for 140 days. We will go in session in January and what we do in the nineteen months in between is we have interim committee meetings. The Lieutenant Governor and the Speaker will give assignments to the various committees to study issues and to look at on some of the bills we have passed to see if they are doing what they are suppose to do. Or perhaps have us look into new issues. We don’t just show up and say ‘okay what are we going to do this session’. We are meeting with folks like you. And we are constantly meeting with people to see if we are on the right track.”

Further describing his committee work Senator Deuell stated, “I’m the Vice-Chair on the Health and Human Services Committee with Senator Jane Nelson of Flower Mound who is the Chair. She is a really great lady and we are studying and learning about our state institutions, our state hospitals, state supported living centers and state operated schools. We decided a hundred years ago to institutionalize way too many people. But we have twelve state supported living centers. We have 3,800 Texans who live there who are mentally or physically challenged. And are we doing a good job? The answer is, we are not. There is no question about that.”

Explaining he stated, “So we are having hearings about that. We are having hearing about how we can fix that. There are states don’t have this problem because they only have community based care. But there are a significant number of people who have come to testify that they have loved ones who are in state supported institutions that say these are the best places for them. We literally had dozens and dozens of people testify.”

In closing Senator Deuell said, “And we also work on mental health issues like how much to we fund mental health. Many of the people in jail now are just there for the sole reason that we are mad at them and they are not really a danger to us but they were not getting mental health services. And if you don’t fund mental health you are going to fund prisons.”