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Review-Journal
CARSON CITY -- A bill providing $440,000 for the state mental health division's growing caseloads and need for expensive antidepressant drugs was approved Tuesday by the Senate.
Senate Bill 176 will help the Division of Mental Health-Mental Retardation finish out 1997 after it experienced dramatic caseload increases in the last year.
The division was budgeted for 3,441 patients at the Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services facility and the Nevada Mental Health Institute in 1997. But actual caseloads increased by 1,221 patients this year alone to 4,662 patients.
The division also wants to switch more patients over to new, safer antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs because the older drugs have serious side-effects and can be lethal.
Costs for the new drugs are dramatically higher than the older line. The newer antidepressants would cost the state between $72 and $95 per month per person compared with the older drugs' cost of between $1.50 and $2 per month.
The antipsychotics cost even more, running between $273 and $361 per month compared with the older class of antipsychotics running between $2 and $2.80 per month.
Sen. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, said before the vote that the new line of drugs offers patients the opportunity for a better quality of life and therefore is worth the added cost.
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