NATCHEZ, Miss. – Adams County supervisors have decided to go with a Vicksburg mental health agency and end an alliance with the McComb-based provider that’s served the region for nearly 50 years.
The Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Complex has been plagued by financial problems and inadequate services in recent years, according to various reports that prompted Adams County supervisors to vote Monday to transfer services to Warren Yazoo Behavioral Health.
Supervisors have been assured mental health funds will not be imperiled by breaking away from SWMMHC, as an agency administrator warned the board last month would happen.
Based in McComb, the agency has a satellite administrative office and mental health-care facilities in Natchez. County supervisors indicated local services won’t be negatively impacted by the new alliance with Warren-Yazoo Behavioral Health.
Mississippi has 13 community mental health agencies that serve regions and receive funds from county boards of supervisors along with federal, state and private dollars.
The boards of most of the nine counties’ served by SWMMHC have opted to break away to join other regional mental health agencies, according to reports presented to Adams County’s five supervisors. Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Complex has served Adams and its eight neighboring counties since 1974.
The Adams County board was told Monday that Warren-Yazoo Behavioral Health of Vicksburg is financially viable with better services than what SWMMHC offers.
SWMMHC’s has “a lot of issues maintaining financial records” that are “not all well kept,” said Bill Rosamond, the state’s coordinator of mental health accessibility.
In meeting last month with Adams County supervisors, SWMMHC administrator Margo Brooks said breaking up the mental health agency’s nine-county service area could result in an estimated $7 million in federal funds being denied or rescinded to cripple mental health services, which include a crisis-intervention unit in Natchez that opened in 2021.
However, Rosamond indicated that’s unlikely to happen. He was appointed by the state in 2020 to monitor Mississippi’s mental health system to determine what services are inadequate and whether community mental health facilities have sufficient funds.
The Adams County Board of Supervisors, along with the other southwest Mississippi counties, provide funds to the public-private agency that relies on government grants, Medicaid and private dollars to pay for mental health services in the region.
While speaking last month as Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Complex’s director of administrative services, Brooks acknowledged management has been “spiraling down” in recent years at the agency that’s been led by Executive Director Sherlene Vance with the oversight of a commission appointed by county boards.
It serves people with a variety of needs ranging from stress counseling to drug rehabilitation. 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. It also has offices on the corner of Wall Street and State streets by the county jail.
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 or be housed in jails.
Mississippi has been the subject of a federal lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department in 2016 alleging the state’s mental health system violates the Americans with Disabilities Act because it lacks sufficient community-based treatment for people with mental illnesses.
The $77,000 that Adams County has annually allocated to the Southwest Mississippi behavioral health agency has been the largest amount of what the region’s nine counties each give, other than what Pike appropriated.
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