Residents Refused Mental Health Services While CMH Spends Millage Money on Consultants, PR and Paid “News” Coverage

Despite the 2017 passage of the Public Safety and Community Mental Health Preservation Millage, Washtenaw County Community Mental Health turns away Washtenaw County residents who need mental health treatment. Meanwhile, CMH Exec. Dir. Trish Cortes and Washtenaw County Administrator Greg Dill have spent the millage money on consultants and marketing to convince the public the Millage money is beefing up services.

by P.D. Lesko

In 2017, Washtenaw County taxpayers approved a 1 mill, 8-year Public Safety and Mental Health Millage that was projected to raise over $15 million per year, or a total of over $120 million. Of that amount, beginning in 2019 Washtenaw County Community Mental Health began to take in $5-$6 million annually. The new millage was sold to taxpayers with the promise that the money would provide enhanced mental health and public safety services. However, as CMH’s Exec. Dir. siphons off Mental Health Millage money to pay consultants who buy print ads, billboards and paid news coverage touting the CMH 24/7 crisis hotline, residents are refused mental health services.

In six recorded phone calls, CMH crisis hotline staff referred callers—including those without insurance—to private mental health care providers. Crisis hotline staff did not ask if callers who were refused services needed crisis intervention (if they were suicidal or homicidal), and hotline staff offered little in the form of help or hope, telling the newspaper’s hotline callers that finding private mental health services could take “months.”

CMH Exec. Dir. Trish Cortes, who has been employed as the Exec. Dir. of CMH since 2015, was contacted by phone and email but did not respond to questions about why county residents were refused services, and why uninsured individuals were directed to private-pay mental health practitioners.

In Ann Arbor, City Council has voted to use its annual $2 million kickback from the Public Safety and Mental Health Millage on climate action. Elected officials have chosen not to use the City’s portion of the millage money collected by the County and kicked back to the City on either public safety or mental health programs and services.

That political decision by Mayor Chris Taylor has had what are arguably life-threatening results.

Violent crime in Ann Arbor has increased. Mentally ill assailants churn through the 15th District Court, sometimes several times per year. District and Circuit Court judges are often uninformed concerning the lack of mental health treatment (as opposed to substance abuse treatment) options in the County Jail, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and throughout the County.

In Oct. 2022, a local restaurant owner was attacked by a knife-wielding man who had been in and out of the Ann Arbor 15th District Court since 2010. In their emails, the the victim and her husband mentioned County Prosecutor Savit’s “no cash bail” and a refusal to prosecute the alleged assailant because he suffers from mental illness. [He was subsequently found competent to stand trial.]

Over just the past few months, one Ann Arbor woman was murdered in her home, and several others have been attacked in broad daylight by assailants suspected of suffering from mental illness. One of those women ended up with her jaw broken in three places. Her alleged assailant, Durell A. Perkins, was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2014 for 2013 felony 1st degree home invasion and larceny charges. As of May 2023, Perkins still owes the Wayne County Third District Court $1,398 in fines and costs. He is now housed in the Washtenaw County Jail on a $30,000 cash bond.

The reality of these crimes is a far cry from the CMH mental health care service “successes” which have been fed to the public by paid consultants hired by CMH Exec. Dir. Trish Cortes.

Public records revealed that since 2021 no bid contracts for public relations and media work costing upwards of $400,000 were executed between Washtenaw County and the Center for Health Research Transformation (CHRT) at the University of Michigan. Cortes is paying the consultants with Mental Health Millage money. CHRT’s Exec. Dir. Terrisca Des Jardins is paid $251,866 by U-M and is currently collecting an hourly rate of $260 paid for by the County’s Mental Health Millage. According to IRS tax returns, CHRT’s work is co-sponsored by Michigan Medicine and the St. Joseph Mercy Health System.

The consulting firm is housed at the University of Michigan. Records show the CHRT consultants are paid with Mental Health Millage funds at rates of between $80-$260 per hour (annual salaries of $166,000-$540,800).

CHRT employees have been contracted to produce PR content that is posted to the Washtenaw County website. According to one such CHRT PR piece: “The crisis team provides 24/7 crisis mental health care to everyone in Washtenaw County ‘without insurance mattering at all,’ a licensed social worker, crisis team service professional, and crisis team service coordinator…..If you’re in a crisis, our team will come to your house.”

None of the newspaper’s callers was offered an in-person visit from the crisis team, or told a crisis team existed.

In fact, one of the newspaper’s callers was told that the CMH waitlist for mental health services was “closed” due to “staffing issues” and “the pandemic.” The caller was also told if he needed a psychiatrist to serve as a “case manager,” the wait would be “a few weeks.”

In a 2022 paid “news article” published by Concentrate, Trish Cortes states, “CMH is a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic, meaning that there is no waiting period to be seen by a physician at CMH, and a patient can be seen no matter what level of mental health care they require. Cortes describes CMH as a ‘front door,’ where patients can either stay and be treated, or be referred to another provider in the area that may better suit their needs.”

Psychiatrists who serve as case managers, among other tasks, typically manage a patient’s psychotropic drug prescriptions. A weeks-long wait would put a crisis hotline caller in need of psychotropic drugs in jeopardy of going without medication, including critically needed antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs.

CMH former clients revealed that their CMH psychiatrists had made mistakes when prescribing and managing patient medications.

In August 2022, Sarah, an Ypsilanti resident, contacted CMH for help with psychiatric case management to oversee her use of medications, and to obtain mental health care treatment.

“I was told that I would see a therapist within a few weeks at my intake appointment just to find out later that they have over a year waiting time to see someone,” she said. She’d hoped to get the help of a CMH psychiatrist to manage her medications. “CMH psychiatrists do not know what they are doing. I was prescribed a medication that would’ve interacted horribly with another medication I was taking. They did not listen to me and completely messed up my medication.”

Another former CMH client said that her CMH psychiatrist had sent her prescriptions to the wrong pharmacy after being repeatedly told which pharmacy the client used. “It wasn’t a huge problem, but I felt like I wasn’t being listened to. Isn’t that the first job of a mental health practitioner? To listen?”

Crisis hotline staff repeatedly asserted CMH couldn’t provide mental health services due to “staffing” reductions. County payroll records show that in 2017, the year the Public Safety and Community Mental Health Preservation Millage was passed, CMH employed 43 mental health professionals, including individuals classified as “mental health professionals,” five staff psychiatrists, (two child psychiatrists), as well as a handful of licensed psychologists.

Six years and $18 million dollars in Mental Health Millage money later (millage money began to be dispersed in 2019), CMH still employs 43 mental health professionals, including three staff psychiatrists and two child psychiatrists.

CMH employs a psychiatrist supervisor who earns $220,000 per year and a psychiatric services administrator who earns $231,958. CMH also added 17 employees classified as “crisis service professionals.” These county employees earn between $52,108 and $67,982 per year.

While CMH turns away residents in need of mental health services due to “staffing shortages,” according to crisis hotline conversations, public records show Trish Cortes has expanded the number of Management and Senior Management Analysts. Recipient Rights Officers number nine, and they are overseen by a Recipient Rights Dir. who earns $100,618.

According to more than one former CMH client, “recipients’ rights” is an oxymoron.

Megan says she sought a variety of services over a several month period beginning in late-2022, including psychiatric case management and individual therapy. “My caseworker was incredibly negligent of my needs. She didn’t show up to an appointment we had set, and I had to beg staff to give me a new case manager, because I felt I wasn’t being taken seriously. I saw my caseworker maybe three times— they’re supposed to meet with you monthly. I was facing homelessness the last time I saw her [the caseworker], she essentially gave me a packet of ‘cheap’ apartments in the area, and sent me off on my way—less than a five minute appointment.”

Cortes, who county records show was paid $161,200.70 in 2022, does not have education or training in clinical psychology or social work. She earned a Master’s degree in community health nursing from the University of Michigan. Lori A. Edwards, DrPH, NPH, BSN, RN, is the president of the Association of Community Health Nurse Educators (ACHNE) and an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. She explains the expertise of an individual with a degree in community health nursing. “Perhaps the easiest way to separate the two is to think of public health nurses as healthcare professionals who create programs and help develop policy and community health nurses as healthcare professionals who implement those programs at the patient level.”

When asked about the discrepancies between what her department’s paid advertising and paid “news articles” purport are services available through the CMH crisis hotline, and what the recorded calls revealed as little to no help offered to callers seeking a variety of mental health services and support, Trish Cortes did not respond.

County Administrator Greg Dill, Cortes’s direct supervisor, also refused to answer the newspaper’s questions. The elected County Commissioners oversee Dill, but have a track record of doing so irresponsibly, even negligently.

The Chair of the County Commissioners, Justin Hodge, is a licensed clinical social worker and an adjunct faculty member at the U-M School of Social Work. In his biography on the U-M website, Hodge says he is “dedicated to mental health and public health on both a policy and individual level.” He has served on the County Commission representing District 5 since 2020. The A2Indy asked Justin Hodge in an email about the diversion of the Mental Health Millage money to consultants, and he did not respond. Likewise, Hodge was asked about the refusal of mental health services to residents by CMH and that question went unanswered as well.

One long-time local mental health patient advocate laughed and then sighed when told told Cortes, Dill and Hodge all refused to answer questions. “CMH needs a huge house cleaning. There’s zero leadership. The people there do everything they can not to provide services. Trish Cortes is the problem. Greg Dill is the problem. Justin Hodge is a joke. Meanwhile, vulnerable people continue to suffer. Frankly, I don’t think Cortes, Dill or Hodge even care. It’s no surprise they didn’t want to answer questions.”

In early 2023 Ann, a new county resident, turned to CMH seeking help for her son. She says her son has not received any help. “CMH is the worst agency on the planet. They have not helped my son in any way since being in this county for six months.”

As for Cortes’s skills in “management and leadership,” former CMH staff members were frank in their disagreement.

One CMH staffer who quit said: “If you want to avoid a political environment, avoid this place. There is also a lot of bullying. Lack of leadership. Supervisors using intimidation. Ignoring emails, calls, and texts.”

A CMH nurse who was interviewed said she left after a year because she felt CHM staff members were not treated “fairly” by supervisors. “Turnover is super high and it impacts the service provided to the community,” she said.

A CMH Client Services Manager who quit after working less than a year at CMH said in a recent public review, “Clients don’t come first.”

Cortes refused to answer questions about her staff members’ allegations of being bullied and intimidated by their supervisors, and allegations of an overall lack of leadership within CMH.

In her Linkedin profile, Cortes says she has a “demonstrated history of working in the government administration industry. Skilled in Nonprofit Organizations, Public Speaking, Management and Leadership. Strong business development professional….”

Meanwhile, public records obtained by the Ann Arbor Independent revealed that since 2021 hundreds of thousands of dollars of Mental Health millage money have been siphoned off by Cortes to buy the services of consultants, through no bid contracts, consultants paid as much as $260 per hour.

Under Cortes’s leadership and management, the consulting firm’s contract with CMH calls for the consultants to produce marketing plans and materials that tout the enhanced services and successes of CMH vis a vis its use of the Mental Health Millage funding. The consultants produce multiple advertising “vignettes” each year that feature county staff. In addition, public records revealed that the consultants produced and purchased multiple print and billboard ads (paid for with Mental Health Millage money) that featured Derrick Jackson, a county employee and a candidate for Sheriff in 2024.

The Ann Arbor Independent recently published a piece about how this spending of Public Safety and Community Mental Health Preservation Millage to produce “vignettes” and “staff spotlights” has been used to benefit Derrick Jackson, a county employee and a candidate for Sheriff. Jackson’s photo and name have repeatedly appeared on billboards in which CMH “thanks” Washtenaw County for “breaking the cycle.”

Jackson’s photo and name (he does not work for CMH) have also been featured in newspaper ads paid for with Public Safety and Community Mental Health Preservation Millage money, and in advertisements placed in and on AAATA buses.

In 2022, before he announced his candidacy, Jackson’s picture and name appeared in promotional ads at the Blake Transit Center on Fifth Ave. in downtown Ann Arbor. Those ads were created by CHRT consultants, bought and paid for with Public Safety and Community Mental Health Preservation Millage money.

Jackson, who calls himself a “social worker,” despite never having any social work clinical experience or licensure in Michigan, was asked about his participation in CMH print and billboard advertising paid for with Mental Health Millage funds. He did not respond.

Public records show that the consulting firm Cortes hired uses Mental Health Millage money to pay the privately-owned Second Wave Media (Concentrate) to produce quarterly “news” pieces that paint CMH and its use of the Millage money in a positive light. CHRT’s media plan for CMH includes using Public Safety and Community Mental Health Preservation Millage money to pay Concentrate (Second Wave Media) for three quarterly articles that highlight the “successes” of the Public Safety and Community Mental Health Preservation Millage.

An email to Patrick Dunn, Managing Editor of Concentrate asking whether Concentrate has, indeed, taken money from the Mental Health Millage to produce paid “news” pieces, went unanswered.

In 2021, Second Wave Media’s owner took in revenue in excess of $3 million, including a large chunk from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. This money funds “news” stories about the MEDC and economic development “successes” in Michigan.

In a recent Concentrate piece about writing workshops paid for with Public Safety and Community Mental Health Preservation Millage money the author writes, “The health department’s Wish You Knew mental health campaign, created in partnership with Washtenaw County Community Mental Health, focuses on fostering supportive conversations between youth and adults about mental health. The campaign began in 2019.”

What that paid “news article” left out were these details:

• The @wishyouknewwashtenaw Instagram page targets destigmatizing mental health issues and encouraging people to seek treatment. However, CMH turns away county residents, including children, who the #wishyouknew movement urges to seek treatment.
• The CMH Twitter account with 132 followers (@WashtenawCMH) was last updated in Sept. 2019.
• The Twitter profile link to the CMH webpage on the county website returns a 404 error message.
• The CMH Facebook page has 135 followers and touts the Crisis Hotline (where mental health treatment services are not offered to callers).

One call to the Community Mental Health (CMH) crisis line lasted around five minutes. While the staffer who answered the call was sympathetic, he was also resolute: CMH does not provide mental health treatment to any county resident “not already a patient.”

The crisis hotline staffer explained that, “There is a waiting list for therapeutic services, but no one new may be added to it.” The newspaper’s crisis helpline caller in search of mental health treatment was told to “reach out to providers in the community who accept your insurance.”

The CHRT consultants are paid to “pitch stories” about the Mental Health Millage to publications such as The Ann Arbor Observer and Groundcover News. Groundcover is a fundraising newspaper sold on street corners by those who are homeless in order to make money. In 2021, IRS records show Groundcover News took in $61,390 and paid out around $30,000 in “salaries.”

Despite CMH’s PR and a $120 million eight-year additional millage, the options for those in need of acute care begin and end in the emergency rooms at both Michigan Medicine (University Hospital Psychiatric Emergency Service) and St. Joseph Mercy. (The two entities that co-sponsor CHRT to reduce Emergency Room visits).

If Google Reviews are any measure, both psychiatric ERs provide service that does more harm than good.

• “The way they treat patients is why some of us die. Don’t go there… no one cares. t -_- t.”
• “After waiting there 24 hours and my daughter receiving no mental health treatment we left and took my daughter to a hospital that could and would advocate for her and get her the help needed. The environment at U of M was unhuman and deplorable.”
• “Absolutely terrible. Wish I could zero star this. Spent over 48 hours in the waiting room. Barely had a chance to speak to doctors. They don’t listen to your issues.”
• “We ended up being there 4 nights/5 days. My son, who already deals with mental illness, slept on a cold floor while I slept in an office chair, as did many other patients. We were both sleep deprived and traumatized. No compassion from most of the staff. DO NOT COME HERE FOR HELP!!!!!!”
• The last time I came here, I waited for seven hours until 5am to get seen for a half hour, and then discharged. I later got a bill for $2000 and some change. I don’t just blame the healthcare system. I blame the U of M Psych ER for thinking that 30 minutes of their time is worth 2 grand in medical bills.

As opposed to beefing up desperately-needed CMH mental health treatment services, Cortes has handed out Mental Health Millage money to the Washtenaw Intermediate School District in the form of a three-year grant. In March of 2023, it was announced that CMH had awarded WISD $2.3 million.

In 2021-2022, the WISD had a $183 million budget, including $107 million collected directly from Washtenaw County taxpayers. Between 2021-2022, the WISD collected $2 million more from taxpayers, but cut the amount spent in instruction from $27 million to $25.4 million. The WISD also slashed the amount of funding for support services from $48.6 million to 42.5 million.

WISD officials claim that the CMH grant awarded to the WISD from the Mental Health Millage for direct clinical support “did not provide substantial funding for the WISD to hire new people like additional counselors or therapists.”

Instead, the WISD is using the funds to train “peer counselors” to identify those in need of help, to destigmatize mental health treatment, and to encourage people of color and the poor in need of mental health treatment to seek out help. To seek out help anywhere, it turns out, other than from Community Mental Health, despite political promises and an eight-year, $120 million dollar additional millage.

Brad Cook is an Ann Arbor resident, in response to the newspaper’s article about Mental Health Millage money being spent on billboards and print advertisements featuring Sheriff candidate Derrick Jackson, Cook wrote, “Is anybody actually spending the Mental Health Millage money on mental health?”

In Michigan, call 988 to reach a statewide mental health crisis hotline. MiCAL is staffed by Common Ground with call specialists from over 18 different counties across the state of Michigan, both in the lower and upper peninsula. Common Ground has over 50 years of experience operating a crisis line and also operates mobile crisis and a crisis stabilization unit‐like facility.