Mental Health Plan Merits Unanimous Support

Police shoot distraught man. Train hits man near fairgrounds. Truck strikes woman downtown. You read about such events all the time; it’s common news in the city of Ventura.

City Manager Donna Landeros demands that the county do something about the causes of all this. The parks and river bottoms have become the home of an army of mentally ill homeless.

Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks is alarmed by the number of police shootings, and 15% of his jail population is mentally ill.

Was it always this way?

Thirty years ago, I was a deputy sheriff patrolling from Camarillo to Ventura Avenue. I was ordered to roll “Code 3,” with lights and siren, to a narrow street at the city end of Ventura Avenue.

I had clocked my patrol car at 107 while being urged on by the dispatcher. He broadcasted a phone call over my police radio as I tore down the old Ventura Freeway.

A woman was screaming hysterically with a pounding, crashing sound in the background. A man with a large knife was breaking down her front door, intent on killing her.

I made the old Avenue exit and took out a garbage can sliding around the corner of the street. Her front door was partially open; a push from my baton opened it completely.

She stood in the middle of her front room clothed in a knee-length fur coat and nothing else. Self-inflicted fingernail scratches ran from her neck to her chest on the left side.

It was a case of her taking a glass of muscatel wine instead of her medicine.

In those days, she and many other mentally ill persons were not arrested but were placed on a three-day hold for treatment. They are not criminals. They are people who, because of physical disease, experience a different reality. Today there are marvelous medications that make their reality normal.

How could anyone who understands the nature of mental illness consider dumping them into a population of predatory street people exiled from society? That is truly a crime.

Compounding these problems is the fallout from the county’s failed merger of its Behavioral (mental) Health and Public Social Services departments. Six investigations and an army of auditors have been swarming all over the hospital and mental health department, paralyzing reform by a new team of administrators. There is also an army of “defense attorneys” trying to mitigate the legal and financial damage done by this misguided merger.

The county Board of Supervisors remains divided over its failure, and county employees who have taken sides continue to wage war on one another.

Is there no hope? Believe it or not, there is hope.

Dr. David Gudeman, newly appointed head of the Behavioral Health Department, has come up with a plan in spite of all the investigative chaos and internal division.

This plan is described as “wonderful--at last!” by mental health advocates, the public, people in government and even taxpayer watchdogs.

The new plan, which must be approved by the supervisors, would make the department proactive as opposed to reactive. Among its points:

* 24-hour crisis team coverage to locate people on the streets and put them on the path to rehabilitation, and the addition of three mental health nurses.

* Psychiatric consultation services for ambulatory-care clinics to provide treatment where none currently exists.

* A 30-bed sub-acute mental health facility. Ventura County does not now have such a facility.

* A special housing consultant to help find safe and secure housing.

* Enhancement of children’s mental health services.

This plan addresses many of the most severe criticisms of the previous administration. It also should provide relief to harried city officials and law enforcement officers.

Most importantly, we have a new humanistic team in mental health that listens to the community. We also have three members of the Board of Supervisors who listen. They are Supervisors Judy Mikels, Frank Schillo and John Flynn. Let’s all pray that it can be unanimous.