By Russell Ledbetter

As the mother of an adult son with mental illness, Irene LaChapelle understands feeling frustrated by “the system.”

While her son, Jeremy, would only receive up to a 50 percent reimbursement for health-care costs, LaChapelle said insurance companies routinely covered as much as 80 percent of costs for those with other serious illnesses.

A decade’s worth of working as an advocate and lobbyist for change in the county, state and national offices of National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) helped bring about change.

In 2001, the state legislature passed reform that helped narrow the disparity between insurance coverage for the mentally ill and those with other serious illnesses.

“We fought a lot of battles and got tired at times, but (NAMI of Iredell) has been a great source of information and a very positive way to work out my anger at my son’s mental illness,” she said.

The battle isn’t over. LaChapelle says she sees care for the mentally ill shrinking at the state level.

“You’re supposed to have a bridge level of funding coming down from the state level to the local level, and it’s just not getting here. It’s just disappearing,” she said. “And if you don’t have any funding for mental health care programs, you’re letting our most vulnerable folks down.”

Crossroads Behavioral Healthcare dispenses state funds on the local level to help people receive mental health services through 120 local and regional service providers, said CEO David Swann.

“We have a fixed amount of money on the state level, and when there is no Medicare or Medicaid, we authorize behavioral health services,” he said.

He said one way to get better funding is to lobby the legislature. That’s why NAMI of Iredell is making a trip to Raleigh on May 21 to speak with state lawmakers about proposed policies for the North Carolina mental health system.

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