Mental Health Cuts

Mental Illness Awareness Week is Oct. 6-12. If the San Diego County Board of Supervisors has its way, the occasion will be marked locally by the closing of a majority of the beds at the county psychiatric hospital.

Granted, the board is in a very difficult position. It is considering largely eliminating county mental health hospital services to balance the budget.

Unfortunately, such reductions would both cut services and cost San Diego taxpayers more, rather than save tax dollars.

Much of the previous and current mental health budget reductions have simply moved costs to other areas, principally to law enforcement, care for the homeless, lost productivity, increased welfare and disability costs, general hospital costs as these patients gravitate to the emergency rooms and other medical intensive care units.

The county will also have increased costs defending malpractice suits by patients and families denied treatment.

There is considerable cost each time law enforcement is called to intervene with the mentally ill with increased expenses for every arrest, booking, jailing and court appearance for various, mostly misdemeanor, offenses.

A conservative estimate would be that, for every mental health budget dollar saved, it probably costs law enforcement and the judiciary two to three dollars for processing the mentally ill who are still untreated and likely to quickly re-enter the criminal justice system.

These increases in costs are mostly invisible, because they are buried and not identified in the other budgets.

More visible will be increased numbers of untreated mentally ill persons, many in San Diego’s downtown. This could mean eventual loss of tourist and convention business, as well as a less desirable area for business and commerce generally.

In summary, the proposed budget cuts would not only cause significant and unnecessary suffering for the mentally ill, but also are a slap in the taxpayer’s face, costing us ultimately more tax dollars in the guise of cutting.

JOHN A. ECKS, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UC San Diego School of Medicine