Lawmakers Vow to Help Mentally Ill

SACRAMENTO — Several legislators, reacting to The Times’ series on mental health care in California, vowed Tuesday to press for more funding to care for severely ill people, improve tracking of them and take a close look at regulations governing private asylums.

The California affiliate of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill called on state officials to redouble efforts to protect people released by state hospitals during the 1990s, and increase oversight of nursing homes where thousands of the most seriously ill are housed.

State Senate leader John Burton said he is considering forming a committee to look into the mental health care system, or at least expand the work of an existing committee responsible for overseeing care of developmentally disabled and mentally ill people. “This is definitely an issue that the Legislature needs to look into,” said Burton (D-San Francisco).

The Times described this week how California has reneged on its promise to provide adequate community care for its sickest mentally ill people. As a result, many end up incarcerated, in acute care hospitals or locked private wards, homeless or dead.

“Finally, the spotlight is on this issue,” said Assemblywoman Helen Thomson (D-Davis). “We have to get smarter, and we have to fund it.”

Thomson and Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda) next year hope to overhaul a 30-year-old law that, in their view, makes it too hard to prod unwilling patients into treatment. And they and others say they will push for more funding.

“Our strategy is to build it up, piece by piece . . . at as rapid a pace as we can,” said Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).

Along with Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach, who is the leader of the Assembly’s Republicans, Steinberg introduced a bill signed into law this year appropriating $10 million more for three counties including Los Angeles to provide service to the severely mentally ill. Steinberg called the $10 million a “down payment” on what could be a $350-million-a-year program.

“This is an issue that is going to crest politically because many different people are recognizing mental health and mental illness as big quality-of-life issues,” Steinberg said.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the California affiliate of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill cited articles in Monday’s Times that focused on 2,509 patients who were in state hospitals in 1991. At least 158 have died since their release, scores are unaccounted for, and several hundred others have been homeless and jailed at least once since their discharge.

“We are morally outraged that so many people entrusted to the care of the counties once the state abdicated its responsibility fell through the cracks,” the statement said.

The organization called on the state and counties to “protect the living members of the Class of 1991 and other people with mental illness” by increasing oversight of private locked nursing homes that care for thousands of severely mentally ill people.

State health officials have issued more than 100 citations since 1992 against eight of 45 facilities that have special state Department of Mental Health certification, and 23 of those citations involved patients’ deaths.

“It’s the type of stuff that pushes my button,” Burton said. “There is nobody else looking out for them.”

Steinberg said he intends to offer legislation to increase oversight, and will push for more funding so that workers, who are paid as little as $6.50 an hour, will receive more training and higher wages.

He also intends to advocate that citations against the facilities be posted on the Internet so they will be more publicly accessible, that licensing requirements be strengthened, and that fines be increased when abuse or neglect of patients is found. Such fines now generally amount to a few thousand dollars.

“There needs to be civil and criminal structure that provides an adequate deterrent,” Steinberg said.

Assembly Majority Leader Kevin Shelley (D-San Francisco) carried legislation vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis that would have increased oversight of nursing homes, including many where mentally ill people are housed. Shelley said he plans to work with Steinberg to revive the bill next year, and add to it.

In Los Angeles, one such facility received 26 citations since 1992, more than any other that cares for mentally ill. County mental health director Marvin Southard said he is considering accelerating changes, including sending the county’s own doctors into private wards rather than relying on the facilities to provide medical care.

Southard also is looking to boost funding for these facilities, which in Los Angeles County receive just $85 a day per patient.

Additionally, Southard assigns high priority to filling hundreds of vacant positions in the department’s clinical and contract staff, and said the Legislature may need to supply money to address shortages in counties throughout the state.