Hospital Closure to Turn Back the Clock

For people with schizophrenia, it is the best and worst of times. Science confirms that schizophrenia is a brain disorder. It is not a “moral flaw” as commonly believed. Nor is it a “normal response” to a “dysfunctional family” or a “mad society” as postulated by the psychiatric community. Traces of these old, stigmatizing ideas are still around, but to a much lesser degree.

More has been learned about the brain in the last five to seven years than in the whole of history. New medications with fewer side effects are available for treatment, and additional ones continue to come on line. Never before have so many with schizophrenia lived more normal and self-fulfilling lives.

People who respond to the medications are indeed blessed. However, as many as 15% to 20% of people who develop schizophrenia do not respond well to treatment. They are the hard-to-treat and hard-to-place. Camarillo State Hospital residents are a part of this population. Others, in large numbers, are sick and untreated on our streets and in jails and prisons; or they are living with aging family members, worn out with care and worry for the future when they die.

The Los Angeles County Jail now houses more severely mentally ill people than any institution in the United States. As state hospitals have closed, the prison population of mentally ill has increased. These statistics do not bode well for the residents of Camarillo State Hospital and their families.

We have turned the clock back more than a hundred years, and for the sickest people and their families, it is indeed the worst of times.

LOU MATTHEWS

Ventura