President’s Column, December 2023

In the weeks following the death of former first lady Rosalyn Carter, the news media have focused a great deal of attention upon her decades of efforts to make meeting mental health needs in our country a priority. In the meantime, voices in East Tennessee have been working toward making addressing mental health needs a priority in our own community.

Meeting with the LWVOR board in November, Toni Stephenson, Vice-Chair of NAMI (Mental Health Alliance of Oak Ridge), called our attention to a November 13th Oak Ridger article announcing the combined effort of three local senators--Becky Duncan Massey, Richard Briggs and Randy McNally, to call upon the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services to launch a study to determine the need for a new state-run treatment facility in East Tennessee.

Lakeshore Mental Health Institute closed in November 2011, and twelve years later, the Oak Ridger article points out, the void left by the closing has not been filled. City and county officials and local providers and care partners alike identify lack of access to care as one of the top three concerns regarding the availability of services in our area. Although other areas of our state may have access to public treatment facilities, East Tennessee is not alone in its challenges. According to NAMI Tennessee’s 2021 Fact Sheet, Tennessee is ranked 27th out of 51 states, including the District of Columbia, for a high prevalence of mental illness and low access to mental health care, indicating a need for services but a shortage of providers to meet the demand. In the U.S., the ratio of individuals to mental health providers is 350 to one. In Tennessee, the ratio is 590 to 1. Tennessee ranks 46th (of 51 states + D.C.) in the availability of mental health workers to meet the need for mental health services in the state. In Knox County alone, 7,700 persons were receiving homeless services in 2020 with mental health being one of the top five causes of that homelessness.

The need for improving access to health care is critical across the country, across the state and in our very own East Tennessee. LWVOR therefore, is calling upon its members to write our legislators, sharing our concern about the need in our state to increase mental health services and to establish a mental health hospital in East Tennessee toreplace Lakeshore.

Carolyn Dipboye, President LWVOR