Press Herald publishes column on state budget cuts by Tom Chalmers McLaughin

The on Feb. 2, 2010 published an op-ed column by Thomas Chalmers McLaughlin, Ph.D., associate professor of social work, on the economic and social costs of cuts in the state mental health budget. "As co-director of the Center for Research and Evaluation in the School of Social Work at the University of New England, I have been collecting data from 102 local police and county sheriff’s offices across the state on the number and frequency of mental health-related service calls. The data demonstrate that since 2008 – the beginning of the state’s budget crisis and increasingly large cuts to mental health and other social services – there has been a 26 percent increase in mental health-related calls for service." The outcome of state cuts "is quite clear: Further budget cuts will most certainly result in higher emergency, hospital, law enforcement and corrections costs over time. And these costs are shifted from state (and federally matched) funds to community property taxes."

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