There appear to be some good reasons to justify Lawrence Memorial Hospital’s decision to close its mental health unit.

The question remains, however, whether those reasons outweigh the need to provide in-patient mental health services in the community.

At Wednesday’s LMH board meeting, LMH President and CEO Gene Meyer said the hospital needed to do a better job of explaining its decision to the public. It was difficult, for instance, to recruit sufficient psychiatrists to serve the unit, which averaged just four patients a day. It’s expensive to keep the unit open for such a small number of patients, many of whom the hospital probably would be treating as indigents because they don’t have any health insurance.

These factors almost certainly make it a sound business decision to close the mental health unit, but that doesn’t make the need disappear. People still need in-patient mental health services, and it’s becoming harder and harder to find a place where they can receive those services.

Both of the state hospitals intended to serve in-patient mental health needs in the eastern part of the state were at capacity last summer leaving professionals at Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center scrambling to place clients. According to Bert Nash CEO David Johnson, the state’s Medicaid reimbursement rates for in-patient care are so low, that many hospitals couldn’t afford to keep their psychiatric units open.

Should LMH be responsible for picking up a responsibility that the state has dropped? It doesn’t seem right, but what are the alternatives? It’s hard enough to get many people into in-patient care without telling them they’ll have to travel all the way to Larned (the only other state facility) to receive that care. Without treatment many people’s conditions will decline. Lawrence residents are focusing tremendous attention on the city’s homeless population. Many of the homeless reportedly suffer from mental illness. Leaving those illnesses untreated creates other costs for the community.

Is there any way to make a mental health unit at LMH financially viable, perhaps by actively seeking to maintain a higher volume of patients? If that’s not a possibility, should our community hospital play a role in serving this need, even if it has to do so at a financial loss? If the hospital is simply unable to provide in-patient care, who will? Lawrence isn’t the only Kansas city facing this problem; the state needs to take more responsibility, but any significant funding increases for mental health care seem unlikely.

Like most physical ailments, mental illness doesn’t just go away. People with mental illness need treatment to get better; without that treatment, the problems of patients, their families and their communities only increase.

There are sound, logical reasons for LMH not to provide in-patient mental health care, but if the community can’t provide another safety net for these patients, the consequences of the hospital’s decision may be more than the community wants to bear.