New S.D. Mental Health Chief Held Similar L.A. County Post

A longtime administrator and advocate for the mentally ill in Los Angeles County has been chosen to head mental health programs in San Diego County, ending a five-month search for someone to shore up the beleaguered system.

Areta Crowell, 52, currently is working as deputy director of program support services for the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health. She will assume her post as deputy director in charge of the Mental Health Services Division in mid-May.

Dr. J. William Cox, director of the San Diego County Department of Health Services, informed community advisers of the selection Wednesday and announced it publicly on Thursday. He had interviewed three candidates last week.

Crowell will take over a system that within the last few years has come under intense criticism. County Mental Health, the hospital for indigents at Hillcrest, underwent a series of investigations, at least one patient died and, eventually, the hospital temporarily lost its Medicare eligibility. Late last year, however, a team of 11 examiners found the division’s programs to be on the ascent.

With a doctorate in psychology and 21 years of administrative experience in the Los Angeles mental health system, Crowell will come to the $80,000-a-year job with the solid clinical and administrative background that officials have said it demands.

In particular, Cox wanted the new mental health director to come prepared to set priorities for an under-funded, overburdened system.

Crowell lists in her resume that her current job calls on her to deal “with the difficult strategy and priority issues of a system which is severely under funded.” It also puts her in charge of “efforts to develop additional resources through grant applications and other funding strategies.”

The previous deputy director, Kathy Wachter-Poynor, who left her job in November, had been criticized as too inexperienced to handle those and other pressing issues of caring for the indigent mentally ill in the county.

Thursday, Crowell’s appointment was greeted with enthusiasm by one of the most persistent critics of the county mental health system, Dr. Jay Shaffer, a psychiatrist who until recently chaired the county’s Mental Health Advisory Board. Shaffer also served on a committee that screened applicants for Cox.

“I was really happy with the selection process and the way they went about carefully reviewing the applications of the candidates,” Shaffer said. “I know that the top three or four people were excellent people and highly qualified.”

David McWhirter, medical director at the county’s Hillcrest mental hospital, said he was impressed by Crowell’s list of experience in the mental health field, particularly since it has been in California.

“The thing I was most concerned about was that we had someone who really could work with the system and knows the system,” McWhirter said. “What we need is a strong advocate at the statewide level.”

Angry about years of being in last place among the state’s large cities in mental health funding, the county recently sued the state to obtain a fairer share of state funds for treating the indigent mentally ill.

Harold Mavritte, who has served as acting director of mental health services here while a permanent director was being sought, said he worked with Crowell for two decades before coming to San Diego in 1984.

He called her “quite competent and capable in all areas,” but said he sees her specialty as planning and development--two areas in which San Diego was criticized by local mental health professionals as extremely weak during Wachter-Poynor’s seven-year tenure.

Mavritte noted that Crowell served from 1984 to ’86 as regional director for mental health services in two Los Angeles County regions.

“The regions in L.A. County are comparable in size to San Diego County. So as far as the complexities of programs, she has had quite a bit of experience in managing programs of comparable size,” he said.

The San Fernando-Santa Clarita-Antelope Valley region that Crowell managed in 1984 and ’85 had a budget of $41.7 million, compared to the entire San Diego County mental health budget of $59.3 million.

Crowell received bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She began an upward spiral through the Los Angeles mental health department in 1967, when she took a job as research analyst.

Since then, she has served the agency as head of evaluation and research, chief of the program development bureau, deputy director for program development, regional director in two separate regions, and deputy director for community support and residential services.

She has been an adjunct professor of health services administration at the University of Southern California, where her husband is a professor of electrical engineering, and an assistant clinical professor in mental health administration at UCLA.

Crowell has served in numerous positions with the California State Psychological Assn., was 1987 secretary-treasurer for the California Coalition for Mental Health and is an elder in First Presbyterian Church of North Hollywood.

The state psychological association honored her in 1982, 1984 and 1985, respectively, for her contributions to public service psychology, to psychology as a profession and for distinguished humanitarian contributions.

Crowell’s selection follows a five-month search process in which the county had to extend the deadline for applications when the first round didn’t produce enough qualified candidates.