Brookline Mental Health Center’s Small-Scale Approach has Big-Time Benefits

With all eyes on the Department of Children and Families (DCF) in the wake of the tragedy of toddler Bella Bond, Gov. Charlie Baker has made plans to reform the organization, but the Brookline Community Mental Health Center (BCMHC) may already have some solutions to offer.

“We’re kind of on the front line of trying to prevent families who are at the risk of disintegrating to the point where DCF would need to get involved from reaching that point,” said center Vice President of Development Nancy Vineberg. “That’s a really big, big thing that we do and that we can do because we’re a comprehensive community mental health center.”

The BCMHC, established in 1958 and governed by the town’s board of directors, serves 6,000 Brookline residents through 38,000 annual visits and 1,500 yearly mediations – 152 treatments or visits a day – 40 percent of which is for youths and their families.

“We provide that, but beyond that, the community part of mental health really speaks to having relationships with a lot of elementary school teachers, principals and the police department,” said Cynthia Price, the center’s executive director.

The center also has strong ties to the Brookline Housing Authority and maintains a clinician in every Brookline public school.

By partnering with various people in the community, the BCMHC can better “address the family’s issues, the parent’s issues, the kid’s issues and all of [the center’s] clinicians can work as a team to help support a family that’s in crisis,” said Vineberg.

The ability to focus on a small scale is what Price believes to be the center’s greatest asset in achieving that level of teamwork across different fields.

“By working together, we can not only impact the individual adult or child or family, but we can also make the community safer and more comfortable for people who are struggling,” she said.

Although Price said she has a great deal of admiration for the DCF and its staff, she explained that the organization and its macro approach is its downfall.

“There are a number of larger centers that serve counties or regions, but because they’re bigger, they can’t focus on what’s happening in the geography,” she said. “They can go to them as an individual patients, which is a good thing, but they may have the ability to see what some of the problems in the community like we could and develop specialized programs to either help prevent the problem or to treat the people who have immersion problems.”

Because of this, both Vineberg and Price believe that a community mental health center would be beneficial to all municipalities, but they concede that their relatively rare organization may not be feasible everywhere. Aside from Allston and Brighton neighborhoods, theirs is the only center like it in the Greater Boston area.

“I think communities have to really wantmental health services and I think that’s where Brookline is very unique,” said Price. “They provide funding to support mental health care and they really value it in the community.”

In fact, Brookline invests $4.6 million into the center yearly – 70 percent of which is covered by donations, while the remaining 30 percent is funded through government grants and tax dollars.

And for a good reason. According to Price, 20 percent of the U.S. population is affected by mental health issues, from the seasonal to chronic, general or debilitating.

“So many of the problems that we see in our society are fueled by a lack of access to mental health care,” said Vineberg. “You see it in our criminal justice system, you see it in our healthcare system, you see it in our education system, and so much of what is failing in our society could be helped immeasurably if people had access to mental health care the same way that they do medical care.”

The BCMHC’s greatest goal is to provide that access to as many Brookline residents as possible, particularly the town’s youth, in order to combat the negative effects that untreated mental illness has on individuals, families and communities.

“There’s no health without mental health – they’re just fundamentally linked,” said Vineberg. “To think that you can ignore that and that people will somehow be OK is just a fantasy. We see it. We see the effects of that.”