Distress Signals

Last year suicidal children and teen-agers waited as long as three weeks for treatment at public mental-health clinics in California. Some people newly released from state hospitals and needing medication waited longer. People with psychiatric problems cannot endure such waits without severe consequences. But California is $54 million short of money to provide the help that the mentally ill need.

Here, this means that eight outpatient clinics in Los Angeles County will close at the end of February following a court decision dissolving an injunction against the move. The 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health has no choice because it must cut costs by $18 million as a result of the state shortfall. Gov. George Deukmejian has allowed no cost-of-living adjustments to mental-health spending over the last two years. This means that the cost of services has gone up but that the amount of money budgeted to pay those costs hasn’t increased.

The situation may get worse. Deukmejian is trying to use tobacco-tax revenues as part of his regular budget instead of raising other taxes. The higher tobacco taxes that were passed under Proposition 99 were clearly intended to increase anti-smoking education and to pay for more health care for the poor, not to replace existing funds. If the governor is called on this ploy, as he should be, then he may be forced to make cuts elsewhere. He threatens other reductions as well if he does not get his way in eliminating the state’s family planning office.

California had been making slow progress in caring for the mentally ill earlier in this decade. The Legislature had approved spending $20 million to test programs to help the homeless, and another $40 million was added to the basic mental-health budget. That progress has come to a dead halt.

The neurotic, the depressed, the suicidal are of course not alone in seeing state help fade. People who have heart attacks or are hurt in auto crashes find emergency-room doors closed. The state does not have the resources to supervise community-care homes for the retarded. The list goes on. It’s time for Deukmejian and the Legislature to work toward changing the limits that restrict how much of its earnings the state can spend on these vital programs and to lay the groundwork for increasing that revenue. This means higher taxes.

In Sacramento, people must focus too much on cutting costs and surviving politically. On the streets and outside the closed clinic doors, people must simply concentrate on surviving. California can do better.