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Mississippi’s troubled mental health system shows signs of repair, report says

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Mississippi’s troubled mental health system shows signs of repair, report says

Fewer Mississippians in mental health crises are stuck waiting in jail cells for a hospital bed each day than they were a year ago, but the state has yet to eliminate the troubling practice completely, according to a new report.

The latest data available shows that from December to mid-January, an average of 23 people in crisis waited for a hospital bed each day. Eight of those waited in jail, despite not being charged with any crime.

Those numbers were much higher not long ago: In the first quarter of this fiscal year, which started in July, an average of 72 people waited for a bed with 24 in a jail cell each day. Similar numbers had been reported for the prior fiscal year.

“The scope of progress is substantial,” wrote Dr. Michael Hogan, the author of a court-mandated biannual report on the state of Mississippi’s mental health system. “But the work is not complete, and some conditions remain that should satisfy no one.”

Hogan’s report comes as the result of a 2016 lawsuit filed against the state by the U.S. Department of Justice. A judge sided with the federal government in 2019, finding the state had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by separating people with mental illness in hospitals from their homes and families. Hogan, a former New York State Commissioner on Mental Health, is now tasked with writing the twice-yearly reports on the state’s compliance with the lawsuit’s consent agreement as a court monitor.

Ultimately, the report found DMH was compliant or in partial compliance with all key issues pointed out in the agreement.

Wendy Bailey, executive director of the Department of Mental Health, speaks to an audience during the Mental Health Meet Up at the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, May 26, 2022.

“The Mississippi system could fairly be described as the most unbalanced state system in terms of preferences for institutional care in the country,” Hogan wrote, referring to alarming issues in patient care first documented by the DOJ in 2011. “As this report is being written, a decade of attention means this imbalance in care has been substantially addressed.”

Late in 2022, DMH reopened a 30-bed unit at East Mississippi State Hospital that had been closed because of staffing shortages. A closed 20-bed unit at Mississippi State Hospital was reopened in January. The added beds contributed to keeping people with mental illness out of jail cells.

Patient counts that the department supplied to Mississippi Today show the number of people waiting in jail for a state hospital bed has been steadily declining for months.

“This is not a small undertaking and is due to the unwavering dedication of an incredible team of staff at DMH Central Office, the four state hospitals, and community mental health centers who strive daily to improve the state’s system of care,” the department’s Executive Director Wendy Bailey told Mississippi Today in a statement, “and to state leaders and legislators who are supporting and funding the efforts.”

The latest report, the third ever, was published this week and charted much of the Mississippi’s Department of Mental Health’s progress in care access across the state. However, lingering staffing retention troubles, data collection and use, patient outreach and communication issues, and jail stays remain sore points in need of improvement, according to Hogan’s report.

When community mental health centers were created 40 years ago – each with their own designated region – they operated with little oversight from the DMH, which focused on running state hospitals. As a result, statewide mental health care was often disjointed or inconsistent.

Hogan’s report studied discharge documentation to better understand how often patients across the state were getting intervention to lessen the likelihood they hit a severe crisis point again requiring inpatient treatment.

While entering inpatient treatment can help stabilize severe mental illness, it doesn’t cure it, Hogan points out. Follow ups are needed to prevent relapses and readmission. Hogan and his team found that community mental health centers contacted a hospitalized client, while the individual was in the hospital, at a rate of 45%.

He said “lukewarm success” in establishing relationships while people are still hospitalized makes impacts whether they attend a follow-up appointment after discharge. The overview found that initial visits were completed in 59 of 89 incidents they could track – about 66%. The rate of follow-up and engagement efforts were adequate in 56 of 87 cases they could track – or 64%.

“Some Regions do a good job on some elements and all do a good job some of the time,” Hogan wrote. “But consistency is lacking.”

Workers like peer support specialists who help contact patients after discharge are often paid at or below what a fast food worker can make, Hogan pointed out. The staffing shortages among these roles were higher than that of other vacancies, such as registered nurses and therapists.

Bailey acknowledged the same hardships but hopes average annual salaries for those support staff positions reach $30,000 by fiscal year 2025. The department has asked the legislature for more funding to help raise wages and improve retention rates.

“We are not only dealing with competition from the private sector, we are dealing with burnout from staff dealing with patients who require 24/7 care who have significant mental and behavioral challenges,” Bailey said in her statement.

Hogan’s first report, issued in March, described Mississippians sometimes waiting weeks in jail for a bed at a state hospital. He also found that some people admitted to state hospitals did not have a serious mental illness – meaning the hospital wasn’t the right place for them and they were occupying a bed that could have been used by someone else.

In his second report, he surveyed North Mississippi State Hospital and community mental health centers in the northern part of the state and did not find patients admitted without a serious mental illness diagnosis.

Bailey said that DMH expects to also see more positive results from people now working as court liaisons who help staff identify community treatment options. The department has also grown programs that provide transitional housing, supported employment and community outreach over the last several years.

Recently the agency began fidelity monitoring, or progress monitoring, of its mobile crisis teams, another positive step Hogan recognized.

“Are there improvements still to be made?” Bailey posed, reflecting on state’s mental health system. “Yes.”

“Has progress been accomplished? Absolutely.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

House gives Senate 5 p.m. deadline to come to table, or legislative session ends with no state budget

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 16:13:00

The House on Wednesday attempted one final time to revive negotiations between it and the Senate over passing a state budget.

Otherwise, the two Republican-led chambers will likely end their session without funding government services for the next fiscal year and potentially jeopardize state agencies.

The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure to extend the legislative session and revive budget bills that had died on legislative deadlines last weekend. 

House Speaker Jason White said he did not have any prior commitment that the Senate would agree to the proposal, but he wanted to extend one last offer to pass the budget. White, a Republican from West, said if he did not hear from the Senate by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, his chamber would end its regular session. 

“The ball is in their court,” White said of the Senate. “Every indication has been that they would not agree to extend the deadlines for purposes of doing the budget. I don’t know why that is. We did it last year, and we’ve done it most years.” 

But it did not appear likely Wednesday afternoon that the Senate would comply.

The Mississippi Legislature has not left Jackson without setting at least most of the state budget since 2009, when then Gov. Haley Barbour had to force them back to set one to avoid a government shutdown.

The House measure to extend the session is now before the Senate for consideration. To pass, it would require a two-thirds majority vote of senators. But that might prove impossible. Numerous senators on both sides of the aisle vowed to vote against extending the current session, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the chamber said such an extension likely couldn’t pass. 

Senate leadership seemed surprised at the news that the House passed the resolution to negotiate a budget, and several senators earlier on Wednesday made passing references to ending the session without passing a budget. 

“We’ll look at it after it passes the full House,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby said. 

The House and Senate, each having a Republican supermajority, have fought over many issues since the legislative session began early January.

But the battle over a tax overhaul plan, including elimination of the state individual income tax, appeared to cause a major rift. Lawmakers did pass a tax overhaul, which the governor has signed into law, but Senate leaders cried foul over how it passed, with the House seizing on typos in the Senate’s proposal that accidentally resembled the House’s more aggressive elimination plan.

The Senate had urged caution in eliminating the income tax, and had economic growth triggers that would have likely phased in the elimination over many years. But the typos essentially negated the triggers, and the House and governor ran with it.

The two chambers have also recently fought over the budget. White said he communicated directly with Senate leaders that the House would stand firm on not passing a budget late in the session. 

But Senate leaders said they had trouble getting the House to meet with them to haggle out the final budget. 

On the normally scheduled “conference weekend” with a deadline to agree to a budget last Saturday, the House did not show, taking the weekend off. This angered Hosemann and the Senate. All the budget bills died, requiring a vote to extend the session, or the governor forcing them into a special session.

If the Legislature ends its regular session without adopting a budget, the only option to fund state agencies before their budgets expire on June 30 is for Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers back into a special session later. 

“There really isn’t any other option (than the governor calling a special session),” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann previously said. 

If Reeves calls a special session, he gets to set the Legislature’s agenda. A special session call gives an otherwise constitutionally weak Mississippi governor more power over the Legislature. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Candice Wilder joins Mississippi Today as new higher education reporter

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 12:24:00

Mississippi Today is pleased to announce that Candice Wilder has joined the newsroom as our newest higher education reporter.

Wilder takes over higher ed coverage from Mississippi Today reporter Molly Minta, who built the beat starting in early 2021 but has since moved to the newsroom’s team covering the city of Jackson.

“I’m thrilled to join a talented and ambitious team of journalists who provide critical news and information to Mississippians,” Wilder said. “Reporting on the state’s colleges and universities at this moment is more important now than ever. My goal is to develop thoughtful coverage and tell crucial stories that will continue to serve and reflect these communities.

Candice Wilder is the education reporter for Mississippi Today.

Wilder, an Ohio native, was one of 19 founding staff members of Signal Cleveland, an inaugural nonprofit newsroom part of Signal Ohio. There, she developed a beat that provided accessible health news and information to residents of Cleveland. Her work has led to recognitions from the Cleveland Press Club and the Association of Healthcare Journalists.

“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Candice to our newsroom,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief. “So many aspects of the higher education system are under intense scrutiny and attack across the country — from free speech to funding to accountability — and Mississippi is certainly no exception. Our colleges and universities are at the heart of critical conversations about equity, access, and the future of our state as a whole. Candice brings a sharp eye, strong reporting skills, and genuine curiosity to our team, and I’m confident that her work will help Mississippians navigate the often complicated and evolving nature of higher ed here.”

“We’re so happy to have someone with Candice Wilder’s passion and experience to pick up the mantle of higher education reporting at Mississippi Today,” said Debbie Skipper, who will serve as her editor. “Molly Minta set a high standard in our reporting in this area, and I know Candice will maintain that while offering her own professional perspective.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

PSC revives solar programs a year after suspending them

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mississippitoday.org – @alxrzr – 2025-04-02 11:25:00

The Mississippi Public Service Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to lift a stay on programs offering incentives for solar power. The same commission voted to suspend the programs last April.

The PSC initially voted in 2024 to suspend three programs: “Solar for Schools,” which allows school districts to essentially build solar panels for free in exchange for tax credits, as well as incentives for battery storage and low-income participants in the state’s “distributed generation” rule. Mississippi’s “distributed generation” rule is similar to net metering in other places, but reimburses customers for less than what most states offer.

Net metering is a program where power companies — in this case Entergy Mississippi and Mississippi Power — reimburse customers who generate their own solar power, often with rooftop panels, and sell any extra power back to the grid.

The PSC suspended the programs in 2024 because, at the time, the federal government was also offering funds through its “Solar for All” initiative. The commission reasoned that the state didn’t need to add incentives, which the previous commission approved in 2022 on top of the new funding. After learning that the state government didn’t receive any “Solar for All” funding, the PSC decided on Tuesday to reverse course.

Solar panels on the central office building of the Ocean Springs School District.

While the State of Mississippi didn’t receive any of the funding, Hope Enterprise Corp. did get $94 million last year through the program to bring solar power to low-income and disadvantaged homes in the state.

The previous PSC created the “Solar for Schools” program as a way to save school districts money on their power bills to help with other expenses. While no districts were able to make use of the program before the PSC suspended it last year, other districts have seen savings after installing solar panels. Any of the 95 school districts within the Entergy and Mississippi Power grids are eligible for the PSC incentives.

Solar advocates disagreed with the PSC’s assertion that federal “Solar for All” funding would have replaced the PSC programs, which went into effect in January 2023, arguing that the commission’s ruling would scare off potential new business. Those advocates applauded Tuesday’s reversal, saying the incentives will support professions within the solar supply chain such as electricians, roofers, manufacturers and installers.

“Yesterday’s actions by the MPSC sends a strong signal that Mississippi is open for business,” Monika Gerhart, executive director of the Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, said via email. “For schools and homeowners that want to save money on their light bill, yesterday’s vote creates additional savings to install solar.” 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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