Mentally Ill Street People Could Use the Attention We Shower on Animals

On a recent Sunday morning, a woman walking her dog on the beach in Venice pointed to a man rummaging through garbage cans and muttered angrily, to no one in particular, that the police should be there to take “those people” away and keep “them” away from “civilized people.”

That same morning I saw a TV spot that proclaimed we spend more on protection of animals than protection of children.

For several weeks, news articles have described how people of privilege and prestige attempted to further their power and wealth by pocketing millions of dollars intended for the development of decent housing for poor and middle-income Americans.

The woman walking her dog on the beach was probably oblivious to the fact that she was violating a county ordinance, while the man going through the trash cans was not committing any crime except perhaps that of disturbing a sense of propriety.

If it is true that we spend more on animal protection activities than those to protect our children, it is indeed shocking. While I love pets, it is a question of priorities. It is frightening to think that human life may be of diminishing importance not only to those who take it indiscriminately through open acts of violence, but also to those in leadership positions who are charged with the responsibility of ensuring its safekeeping and nourishment.

In the case of the housing scandal, it is a matter of downright greed, openly and arrogantly expressed without remorse or fear of retribution. Neither ethics nor moral values became a factor.

Our failure to provide adequate housing for the poor is a visible phenomenon. It is sometimes not as clear that we have failed a growing number of middle-income Americans who have raised their children, paid their taxes and looked forward to a meaningful retirement only to see their dream shattered by ill health, physical or mental, their own or a loved one’s.

I wonder, as we experience frustration with our own efforts to increase funding for mental health and other vital human services, if there isn’t a growing need to try to understand the action of a governor’s blue pencil in the context of a national mood or prevailing social value.

The wish to make California the showcase of the Pacific Rim is understood as valuable for business; it is not the priority of one person or even one governor. The competition for economic development is a cold reality, but can it be won to the exclusion of other values without a devastating social impact? Is it possible that a nation founded on the principle that each human life has value has instead focused its priorities on the acquisition of wealth, with diminishing responsibility for those who need our care the most?

As we seek to understand this, I shed no tears for the early days of the War on Poverty, the Great Society and the programs and mentality that they spawned, leaving only greater scars on our inner cities, rural areas and ethnic minority communities. There was much experimentation at the cost of communities desperate for essential services. Later, funding was pulled from human services on the ground that much of the experimentation had turned out to be a failure.

Today, in the field of mental health, the fact is that we do know what needs to be done and how it can be successfully achieved. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times described a case-management program for chronically ill clients in the San Fernando Valley. The program resulted in reducing their use of state hospital inpatient care by 80%, thereby greatly reducing the cost of treatment. There has been wide recognition of the Step Up On Second Street socialization program in Santa Monica, which provides a valuable support service in a nontraditional, attractive, storefront operation. The county’s mental-health outreach team on Skid Row was featured on national television as one of the few effective programs in working with the homeless mentally ill. Our crisis management and mobile response program has been widely acclaimed by two grand juries.

Yes, we know what needs to be done and how to do it. We have been willing to redirect priorities and initiate a reform of the system through the development of a long-range master plan for the delivery of mental-health services. We ask for nothing more than adequate funding to implement that plan--to maintain and expand programs that we know are effective in alleviating the nightmare of mental illness for clients, their families and our communities.

Mental illness does not discriminate by class or race. We must be prepared for it everywhere in our community. When we see “them” in our neighborhoods, disheveled, dirty and at times offensive, we must understand who “they” are: our sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers. We must give “them” our very best.