Last month, a new state-run psychiatric hospital opened in Dallas, one of the first built in several decades. The Texas Behavioral Health Center is part of a multi-year, multibillion-dollar investment by the state to rebuild and modernize its state hospital system. No other state has made a dedicated investment of this kind, despite a nationwide shortage of psych beds.
Texas’s investment represents a needed shift. While states have poured tens of billions of dollars into unaccountable generic mental health efforts, serious mental illness has remained chronically undertreated. States need a strategy for serious mental illness. Texas is providing a framework for that.
Serious mental illness, best represented by schizophrenia, is distinct from common anxiety, depression, and ordinary distress. It warrants special attention. Serious mental illness causes functional impairment and often involves psychotic symptoms. Although it affects only about 5% of Americans, it accounts for a disproportionate share of the street homeless and incarcerated. Neglected by the mental health system, these hardest cases put other public systems under strain: social services, courts, and emergency departments…