5 Southland Counties Speak Out : Officials Decry Lack of Mental Health Funds

Legislators and health officials from five Southern California counties, including San Diego County, met in Irvine on Monday to complain that their mental health programs are not receiving a fair share of state funds.

“There simply is insufficient money for the need. It is a dramatic need, and if you don’t resolve mental health problems, it will turn into a real keg of dynamite,” said state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who organized the unusual meeting for representatives from San Diego, Orange, Riverside, Imperial and San Bernardino counties.

Under existing funding formulas for the five counties, Bergeson warned, “only the most severely acute cases are being handled, and the others are being turned away.”

Treatment Units Closed

In San Diego County, three residential treatment units have closed in the past two years because of a shortage of state funds, Bergeson said.

An analysis supplied by her office showed that, in the 1986-87 fiscal year, Los Angeles received $29.09 in state mental health funds per person and San Francisco received $54.08. By contrast, San Diego County got $17.16; Orange County received only $17.56; San Bernardino County got $19.99; Riverside County got $20.80, and Imperial County got $22.30.

The state formula for distributing funds is based on a complex rating system that measures a county’s “poverty population index,” said Dean Owen, a spokesman for the state Department of Mental Health. That formula was agreed upon five years ago by county mental health directors and officials from the Department of Mental Health, Owen said.

But, he added, “We recognize that some counties get a lot less mental health money per capita than San Francisco or Marin.”

Two representatives from Owen’s agency attended Monday’s meeting and were sympathetic to the complaints, Owen noted. “We recognize that the counties could benefit from additional money. We’re willing to sit down and address the problem” through legislation, he said. Some of the participants in Monday’s meeting agreed that legislation is needed.

“The formula is not adequate,” said state Sen. Ruben S. Ayala (D-Chino). “I don’t understand why that (population growth and poverty) has anything to do with mental health. You should do it by caseload.”

Ayala said his fast-growing county has nearly doubled its population in the last 10 years but still has only 56 beds reserved for mental patients--exactly the same number it had in 1975.

Meanwhile, Ayala said, such areas as East Los Angeles get more money than San Bernardino because of their poverty index. “I came from a barrio in Chino,” Ayala said. “Just because you are involved with a poverty situation does not necessarily mean you need mental health services.”

Assemblyman Nolan Frizelle (R-Fountain Valley) agreed.

“To have the formula driven by poverty is to distort the reality of it,” he said. “And until the Department (of mental health) acknowledges some modification, they’ll never get equity funding.”

Several legislative aides and health officials also noted that the five counties’ problems have been exacerbated because when state money first became available for mental health in 1969, those counties were late in setting up their programs.

“Northern California counties jumped into the program and so they got their share,” said Ronald R. DiLuigi, assistant director of Orange County’s Health Care Agency. “Orange County came into it later . . . and Orange County of necessity had to build a skeleton program.”