Missouri Coalition of

Community Mental Health Centers

915 Southwest Blvd., Suite A
Jefferson City, MO 65109
Phone (573) 634-4626
Fax (573) 634-8858

admin@mocmhc.org

 

President / CEO
Tim Swinfard
 tswinfard@mocmhc.org

 

Director of Administration

Paula Stanley
 admin@mocmhc.org

Disease Management Initiative Director
Carole Schutz

 

Mission

 

The mission of the Missouri Coalition of Community Mental Health Centers is to enable access to quality mental health services by all Missouri citizens in need of such services, while maximizing their human potential and quality of life. This mission will be accomplished through the continued maintenance and development of a stable statewide network of comprehensive community-based mental health care.

 

  • Missouri Coalition of Community Mental Health Centers includes organizations which serve mental health client needs through individualized treatment in the most appropriate and least restrictive settings while meeting eligibility criteria and standards for membership in the Coalition.

  • Continued development implies the progressive advance of establishing an equitable statewide system of community mental health services.
  • Statewide system suggests an organized and integrated whole, made up of diverse and independent, but interrelated, mental health service providers within the state.
  • Comprehensive indicates a continuum of services which includes screening and assessment, case management, medication management, individual and group outpatient, provision of or access to inpatient on both a scheduled and 24-hour-per-day basis, rehabilitation, 24-hour emergency services, community support, consultation, education and prevention, and administrative coordination.
  • Community-based mental health care implies a decentralized model with facilities, programs and services available in a wide range of settings throughout a given local area of residence.
  • Authority and responsibility are vested with the local community board.

Brief History

Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs) emerged as the result of federal legislation in 1963: Public Law 88-164 / "The Community Mental Health Centers Act," a long overdue response to a critical need. As history has documented, the mentally ill—for decades—had been scorned, warehoused and abused. All over this country, many thousands of patients found themselves enduring indefinitely the indignities and despair associated with the crowded wards of our nation’s mental institutions.

The Community Mental Health Centers Act required that an alternative to institutionalization be developed, which provided for early intervention and treatment for both adults and children, along with the hope that such a system could ultimately stem the tide of long-term, debilitating mental illness.

Twelve years after the Community Mental Health Centers Act became law, on July 29, 1975, Congress extended its commitment to community mental health and stated in its Amendments, Title III of Public Law 94-63:

Section 302 (a) The Congress finds that

1. Community mental health care is the most effective and humane form of care for a majority of mentally ill individuals.

2. The Community Mental Health Centers have had a major impact on the improvement of mental health care....

In Missouri, Community Mental Health Centers, designated as Administrative Agents by the Department of Mental Health, are the primary treatment providers for both adults and children in the Department of Mental Health’s Comprehensive Psychiatric Services Division. In accordance with State Statute 632.050 RSMo, these designated centers serve as entry/exit points in each geographic area, into and from the state mental health delivery system, offering a continuum of comprehensive mental health services.

Additionally, the Community Mental Health Centers must be responsive to their respective communities and thus function in the private as well as the public sector. Through the years, CMHCs have consistently worked with the business community, the schools, the juvenile justice system, disaster response teams, special populations, and numerous government and private agencies in developing a variety of innovative, outcome-based, model programs which have been implemented both locally and statewide.

As the nation looks to the future, examining its healthcare policies and debating the various, diverse aspects of numerous reform proposals, the CMHCs are well positioned as leaders of managing care in the truest sense, utilizing the continuum of care model which offers consumers the benefits of receiving individualized types and levels of treatment while progressing through a total quality, cost-effective, least restrictive "system" of care.