We were able to get a perspective on public mental health services and how they have changed over the years when we interviewed Dwayne Stone who has been a mental health counselor in Washington State for 3 years and in the business for over thirty years.
He said that two significant changes have happened in the last 20-25 years that have made his job to help people heal from their mental distress a lot harder. For one, he has much more paperwork to fill out in order to prepare for audits to maintain public funding and his case load has increased almost sevenfold. Twenty five years ago his case load was around 12 clients. Today it has grown to 70 to 80.
Dwayne states that it is the time spent with the person, listening and asking them about what they are experiencing that helps the healing process. Today almost the only thing he has time to do after all the paperwork is make sure they are taking their meds and to help them get their disability benefits – neither of which addresses the underlying cause of their distress.
