State’s First Lady Calls for Mental Health Reform

Swarmed by camera crews and mental health advocates, California’s first lady, Sharon Davis, on Monday toured Los Angeles County Jail psychiatric facilities and a well-known Long Beach services agency to highlight the state’s need for systemwide mental health care reform.

Davis’ visit symbolized interest from the top level of state government in addressing long-ignored problems of the incarcerated and homeless mentally ill. “We’ve turned the corner,” one mental health advocate whispered to another after her departure.

In an interview, Davis said it was not her intent to become the Tipper Gore of California, referring to Vice President Al Gore’s wife, who has become an outspoken advocate for mental health causes. Davis’ husband unexpectedly tapped her to work on a reform bill when she happened to walk in on a meeting with concerned legislators last month. She said her only preparation was past work on homelessness and with a charitable foundation.

Davis said she has thrown herself into the issue, talking with everyone she can think of about why mentally ill people get stuck in a “revolving door” between jails and the streets.

The crash course already has made her a strong advocate for early, comprehensive and community-based treatment. It doesn’t make sense, she says, that the first--sometimes the only--treatment mentally ill people receive is when they are behind bars.

“Putting [mentally ill] people in prison is the most expensive way to care for them,” Davis said, likening the approach to treating sick people only when they arrive in the emergency room.

On Monday, Davis’ first stop was the Los Angeles County Jail--often referred to as the largest mental institution in the United States. The downtown Twin Towers facility houses about 2,500 mentally ill men and about 300 women, officials said.

Davis dropped in on the women’s outpatient unit, giving some of the blue-suited inmates around a table a chance to share their troubles.

“I leave tomorrow,” one inmate told her. “That’s my problem.”

Pulling up a chair, Davis asked her where she would go.

“I don’t know,” the woman said, breaking into tears. “I hope and I pray. I’m calling my grandmother’s. . . . [If that doesn’t work] I’m on the street. I have nowhere to go.”

“That’s why we need more facilities to turn to when they leave here,” Davis said.

At her elbow throughout the tour was Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who has authored legislation that would expand community-based mental health treatment in California.

Although Steinberg’s bill, AB 34, sponsored by the state Mental Health Assn., is still pending, the governor has agreed to budget an initial $10 million to plan and finance model community programs in California.

Steinberg’s goal is to create a system of community care, which could cost up to $350 million a year. He has support from across the aisle in Assembly Republican leader Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach, who believes such a program would save the state money by diverting people from costly incarceration.

Davis took every opportunity to laud Steinberg’s efforts and community treatment in general. At the Village, a Long Beach community services organization that offers everything from counseling to job placement, she told her audience: “What you are doing is keeping people out of that [jail] facility. . . . You are a shining example of what can be done.”

According to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 15% of jail and prison inmates in the country, and almost 20% of those imprisoned for violent crimes, suffer from mental illness.

In September 1997, the department classified Los Angeles County’s treatment of mentally ill prisoners as “constitutionally inadequate.” By February 1998, the county had moved mentally ill inmates into a new facility and doubled the size of its mental health staff, but the Justice Department probe continues.

Steinberg and mental health advocates were plainly grateful--and relieved--for Davis’ interest. “Today is so important,” Steinberg said. “It puts an important spotlight on the problem.” Some advocates said the visit led them to hope that finally, three decades after mental patients began to be released en masse from state hospitals, the state may make good on its promise to provide structure and support for them in their communities so they don’t relapse.

Fueling their hopes are advances in drug treatment that mean many patients can function reasonably well as long as they can tap into services and continue to take their medications.