Interim Director’s Plan Offers Hope for County’s Mentally Ill

Just when hope for needed improvements for the mentally ill seemed least likely, a Phoenix rose from the ashes of audits and county divisiveness. Dr. Pierre Durand, head of the Ventura County Health Care Agency, directed his time and attention to improve care for people suffering brain disorders. He appointed David Gudeman, an insightful and caring doctor, to serve as interim Behavioral Health director. In just a few months, Gudeman has accomplished what administrators had been unable to do in 10 years: He generated a hopeful plan, a biosocial / psychosocial model that addresses the major concerns of every mental health advocate I know.

In this plan, he has requested a budget providing for a desperately needed subacute-care facility. Among other things, his plan calls for retaining a nationally recognized housing consultant and would begin implementing a housing program for people suffering brain disorders. It would strengthen the crisis team’s ability to respond to psychiatric medical emergencies. It would provide for a psychiatrist to serve the county emergency room and hospital on a 24-hour basis so that people suffering psychiatric disabilities were properly referred to the psychiatric facility before being released--potentially into harm’s way.

In spite of my natural skepticism about popular television programming, I am ready to speculate that Ventura County has at last been “Touched by an Angel.” I urge county supervisors to support this divinely inspired budget and begin repaying with interest and with all the necessary legal appropriations the $4.5 million in realignment funds taken from Behavioral Health.

Furthermore, I urge supervisors to support Gudeman’s appointment as permanent Behavioral Health director. His appointment would guarantee the momentum of the vision the community and advocates clearly demanded earlier this year:

* At the January visioning day for the city of Ventura, 180 residents completed a survey in which they ranked supervised housing for the mentally ill as a high priority.

* At the Call-to-Action Conference in February, 350 county residents gathered to examine solutions for the plight of the homeless mentally ill.

Gudeman and his quality-control trouble-shooter, Dr. John Wong, have sought out client, family and community input and Gudeman’s plan reflects this. Improved responses to crisis situations have pleased normally distraught patients and families. His permanent appointment would give Gudeman immediate and improved authority to implement his deserving plan.

Recently John Chaudier, chair of the Ventura County Mental Health Board, requested immediate action as an important bromide for uncertainty and unrest in the county. Notwithstanding this flash of insight on his part, now that the merger has been unmerged, he has assumed the role of antagonist, ignoring his own advice to the board in November: “The merger is done; don’t complain; make it work.” In leveling unfounded complaints about Gudeman’s leadership in his unilateral April 22 letter to the supervisors and insisting on a search for a new candidate for Behavioral Health director, Chaudier demonstrated both a stubborn unwillingness to “make it work” and an unsettling disregard for the facts.

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For the record, Lynn Aronson, the housing consultant budgeted in Gudeman’s plan, although known to the previous Behavioral Health Department, was never contacted by county administrators prior to speaking at the Call-to-Action Conference in February. The housing task force had been disbanded early last year after embarrassing errors were uncovered in its request for proposals. The previous administration turned a deaf ear to many important items outlined in the Gudeman budget.

It is a cruel hoax that the audit released this week by the state Department of Mental Health finds that “an exceedingly high” number of patients are hospitalized in the psychiatric ward at Ventura County Medical Center--a 43-bed facility required to serve a county of nearly 800,000 residents. More cruel still are the auditors’ findings that patients could be better served by residential treatment facilities, which are nearly nonexistent in this county and which have been begged for by families of the mentally ill for more than a decade. Any family that has lived through this harsh reality should be outraged that state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) and others with political agendas unsupported by the facts would stoop to placing the blame for these long-standing problems on the Behavioral Health administration that has actually begun to address the problem.

Let’s not tolerate a repetition of this kind of nonsense. Neither let us gamble on losing the services of Gudeman, who has listened and responded to the community under highly adverse circumstances.

On a final note, I celebrate the presence of Supervisor John Flynn as the new advisor to the Mental Health Board. It was Supervisor Flynn who spearheaded two significant advancements to meet the needs of the county’s adult mentally ill: Opening of the 30-bed Las Posadas residential care facility and Hillmont Psychiatric Hospital. His balanced leadership and constructive problem-solving abilities will be a shower of sunshine in an otherwise overcast and turbulent storm front.