Today, life seems to be more stressful than ever before, and there is deep sickness within our society in the forms of hate, discrimination, fear. As people are suffering from anxiety, depression, mood disorders, PTSD, and addiction at increased rates, we know that we need serious change. At A Safe Haven, our clients all receive behavior healthcare, as almost all of them are suffering from at least one of these mental health challenges, unsurprisingly. The good news is that we are equipped with the professionals who can diagnose, treat, and support these underlying mental health issues and help our clients get to a place of improved health and wellness.
Left untreated, these types of mental health issues are causing tremendous strife in our society. At the same time, we hear every day about the problems that Chicago and the nation at large are facing with issues like urban homelessness, crime, and violence. We are inundated with ideas from government leaders, business leaders, and from the community, yet no response so far seems to fully provide the right answer, as the reality of mental health challenges are not discussed or worse, programs that do address them are unfunded and eliminated.
Ever since the government began reducing and eventually eliminating funding for human services, almost a decade ago, we have seen these problems skyrocket. Even our own success rates couldn’t prevent cuts to A Safe Haven. These cuts were never based on any type of performance metrics, they were just a way to balance budgets at the time. Hindsight is 20/20 but we knew that with little to no resistance from the public, those who needed these services the most were completely at the mercy of the system.
While we certainly don’t have all of the answers, from our point of view, it is no exaggeration when we say that the alarm bells are ringing everywhere we look: homelessness is commonplace, people are dying, and time and money are running out. The number of people in crisis and the number of violent crimes continue to break records. A recent New York Times op-ed titled “Spend a Dollar on Drug Treatment, and Save More on Crime Reduction” enumerated the many ways treatment saves not only lives, but money, which is something we’ve known since we started in 1994. More than half of all violent offenders and a third of property offenders say they committed crimes while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. These offenders are typically imprisoned, especially if they are black or Latino, and their addiction and any other underlying mental illness goes completely untreated. How are they supposed to get better if they are never given the chance?
Co-occurring problems, like the perfect example of mental health issues and substance abuse, are illustrated clearly in the ongoing opioid epidemic we are facing as a nation. Researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently estimated that opioid abuse, dependence, and eventual overdose cost an estimated $23 billion per year, in public health and extra policing costs. An estimated 80,000 Americans are incarcerated for opioid related crimes annually, costing us over $51 billion to keep funding the criminal justice system and prisons, which do not help anyone recover from opioid addiction. Another way to look at these costs is that the opioid epidemic has led to a 3,000% increase in health insurance claims, from 2007 to 2014. Additionally, the opioid overdose death rate now exceeds car accidents and gun violence death rates combined, and we can expect the rate of insurance claims to surge even higher.
The easy answer to fixing the opioid crisis is medication assisted treatment, which has been proven to reduce the number of overdose deaths. We agree that this is incredibly important, but we urge our government leaders not to believe that this is enough, despite what the medical and pharmaceutical industries claim. Unless we implement a more thoughtful, robust, evidence-based approach, from people actually working in these communities, we will all lose. This approach must focus on underlying mental health issues that cause, contribute to, and sustain addiction.
When we started A Safe Haven 23 years ago, we created our model with the intention of truly transforming lives, sustainably. Although we love the individual success stories from our clients, we love our system even more because we know that the only way to solve these multidimensional social issues is systemically.
While studies show that giving to politicians, universities, hospitals, and the arts garner the bulk of the charitable donations in the world, consider giving to directly to help address mental health, to help heal humanity, and to foster safer and more viable communities. Your support will help more people achieve long-term success.
A Safe Haven’s system addresses the multiple mental health challenges people may be facing by first meeting their short-term needs, like shelter and food, while also preparing them to succeed long-term through treatment, job training, education, family programs, and more. Thanks to our many dedicated supporters we are able to move the vast majority of our clients through our system onto their highest level of independence.
Contributing to our system will help more people achieve long-term success and wellness, and we hope that with enough change at A Safe Haven, we can go beyond ourselves and challenge an outdated, entrenched system that has a tremendous amount of support from those that are deeply committed to the way things are.
Love and blessings,
Neli Vazquez Rowland
Co-Founder and President
A Safe Haven Foundation
