Rally Spotlights Need for More Mental Health Funds

More than 700 people held a pep rally in a Pasadena church hall Friday, all of them lobbying for a simple, if elusive goal: more public money for the mentally ill.

The Los Angeles Advocates for Mental Health, a consortium of a dozen local mental health organizations, had organized the mass meeting and bused in members from throughout the county in an effort to dramatize the plight of the mentally ill.

Caught in a budget squeeze at both the county and state level, mental health patients are facing dwindling public services.

A roster of psychiatrists, nurses and other health-care workers joined several state legislators and local officials Friday in pressing for increased funding for mental health.

But none of the speakers was more poignant than the mentally ill themselves and their families.

Karl D. Schneider, a tall man with a military-style beret, described his 10-year reliance on county mental health programs and said his life collapsed when the county sought to close the Arcadia Mental Health Center.

County mental health officials had attempted to shut down the Arcadia clinic, along with seven other outpatient centers, until they were stymied by a court order. But Schneider said he remains frustrated by the uncertainty over the clinic’s future.

“My wife left me; my son left, (and) I was left at home, along with no one to return to. I am a veteran, and I did the best I could. Right now, I am being held together with glue and paper clips,” said Schneider, who was greeted with a loud ovation.

Marjorie Forman, the mother of a 44-year-old woman with schizophrenia, told the rally that her daughter has made significant strides in her last two years after more than two decades of “hell.” But now her daughter finds her county-funded clinic threatened by future budget cuts.

Staff Reductions

“With the impending closings and the reductions of staff, she faces the gloomy prospects of being homeless. She could become a street person, and this would be her fate,” Forman said, looking at the crowd. “And this could be your son’s fate or your daughter’s fate.”

The grim warning--echoed by nurses at a local crisis center, the head of a psychiatric emergency room and a worker who deals with mentally ill children--provided the backdrop for what was called “a state of emergency” in California mental health.

Dr. Milton Miller, chief of psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, described the current crisis as “the saddest, the most cruel, the most desperate” period in mental health that he has seen in his 40-year career.

Miller, along with other speakers, urged the gathering to actively lobby Gov. George Deukmejian and the Legislature for more dollars for the mentally ill. At the same time, he and other mental health advocates decried the governor’s threat to slash $200 million more from mental health, when the next fiscal year begins July 1.

Governor’s Stand

Deukmejian has argued that amount must be cut from the $500 million the state currently spends on the mental health unless cost-of-living increases for welfare recipients are eliminated.

Such a move would result in a loss of more than $70 million for Los Angeles County, and Mental Health Director Roberto Quiroz has warned that the result would mean wholesale reductions in local mental health programs.