Regional mental health administrator for Adams County alarmed about potential loss of federal funds

NATCHEZ, Miss. – Adams County supervisors have been warned that millions of dollars in federal funds for regional mental health-care services could be lost if southwest Mississippi counties don’t stay unified in supporting the behavioral health agency designated to serve the nine counties.

“We have a lot on the line here. The solution is not to split up the region,” said Margo Brooks, an administrator with the Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Complex.

Meeting Monday with the Adams County Board of Supervisors, Brooks said Pike County officials last week decided to secede from the McComb-based Southwest Mississippi behavioral health agency and join the Hattiesburg-based agency assigned to cover south Mississippi and coastal counties.

“This is not a good move,” said Brooks, who calculated this could result in $7 million in federal funds being denied or rescinded to cripple mental health services that include a crisis-intervention unit in Natchez that opened in 2021.
The Adams County Board of Supervisors, along with eight other neighboring counties, provides funds to the public-private agency that relies on government grants, Medicaid and private dollars to pay for mental-health services in the region.

Brooks said federal funds pay 60 percent of the salaries for the southwest Mississippi behavioral health agency’s employees.

While Brooks is director of administrative services for the Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Complex, she said management has been “spiraling down” in recent years at the agency that’s led by Executive Director Sherlene Vance with the oversight of a commission.

Brooks said she could be fired for meeting Monday with Adams County to blow the whistle about the potential loss of federal funds. However, she said she’s compelled to speak up about what she called “a travesty” spun by “uninformed” people and “misinformation.”

Adams County supervisors said they’ll meet with others involved in the mental-health agency’s operations before deciding what the county board could do in response to Brooks’ concerns.

She said federal funds would be withdrawn because the money is not being directed for which it was originally granted to serve Adams, Pike, Franklin, Jefferson, Wilkinson, Claiborne, Amite, Wathall and Lawrence counties.

She said the counties could be forced to repay the federal government millions of dollars provided to the Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Complex, also known as A Clear Path of Southwest Mississippi Behavioral Health.

It’s served people with a variety of needs – ranging from stress counseling to drug rehabilitation – since 1974.

The agency operates its eight-bed crisis-stabilization unit in Natchez along with psychosocial rehabilitation and alcohol & drug treatment facilities at a former medical clinic on Jeff Davis Boulevard. The agency also has offices on Wall Street.

The Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Complex has been beset with problems in recent years largely caused by services deemed inadequate by state officials because of funding shortages and the lack of qualified mental-health professionals.

A corrective-action plan drafted last year focused on ensuring community-based services are provided to those in need to ensure they don’t have to go elsewhere.

The $77,000 that Adams County has annually allocated to the Southwest Mississippi behavioral health agency is the largest amount of what each of the region’s counties give other than what Pike appropriates.