Treatment of Mentally Ill Decried by Author

Calling society’s treatment of the homeless mentally ill “the greatest moral disgrace of 20th century America,” author and psychiatrist Stephen Seager on Friday implored relatives of the mentally ill to get involved in changing a badly flawed system.

“Doctors have had a voice from 1850 to 1950 and we can’t do it,” Seager told a crowd of 350 at the Four Points Sheraton at Ventura Harbor. “Attorneys have been in charge from 1969 to now and they can’t do it either. But who’s never had a voice is family members of the mentally ill. This is your issue. It’s your time to be in control.”

The Call to Action forum, sponsored by Business Digest and the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Ventura County, was meant to educate the community on the needs of the homeless mentally ill.

Seager, author of “Street Crazy: The Tragedy of the Homeless Mentally Ill,” said allowing mentally ill people to live and die on the streets was unconscionable, especially when many illnesses are treatable.

“We are tolerating right now, as we speak today, the systematic starvation, murder, rape, shooting, stabbing and neglect of our own children, our own parents, brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends simply because they had the misfortune to become ill,” Seager said.

The conference was attended by several local leaders, including Supervisor Kathy Long, who is heading a countywide homeless task force. That committee was formed in December after homeless people in Ventura--many of whom are mentally ill--were left without a cold-weather shelter this winter.

Ventura officials had argued their city seemed to be shouldering the lion’s share of the responsibility for caring for the estimated 2,000 to 4,000 homeless people in the county. City officials were especially critical of county government, saying it is falling short of its state mandate to provide services for the homeless, particularly those suffering from a mental illness.

“What he had to say validates what we know is a failure in the system,” Long said after the event. “It’s not just a medical issue, it’s a social one. We’re right on target in what we are trying to do in this county--to provide a holistic approach to treating the mentally ill so that we reach all of their needs.”

Seager said an estimated 300,000 to 1 million mentally ill people are living on the streets nationwide, in large part a result of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1969. The federal law gives mentally ill people the right to refuse treatment and medication unless they are a danger to themselves or others.

“The way the law is written, it’s OK for them to sleep under a car and OK for them to eat out of dumpsters, as long as they understand that garbage is filled with maggots and is bad,” Seager said.

“If you have tuberculosis in California, there’s a law that says you have to take your medicine,” Seager said. “Suddenly, if you have a mental illness, it’s a different story.”

Ninety percent of mentally ill people are schizophrenic, which is a progressive disease similar to Alzheimer’s, Seager said. Without proper medication, a schizophrenic can lose 45 IQ points in a lifetime, he said.

“Imagine if we had a treatment for Alzheimer’s and the law said we can’t [force people to] use it, people would be up in arms, but it’s schizophrenia and we tolerate it,” Seager said.

“The true term to describe our children, our friends, our relatives and neighbors who must exist in our sewers, jails and gutters solely and for no other reason than because they are sick is the untreated mentally ill.”