Mental Health Board Head Delighted, Petrified by Role

Sporting baby doll socks and two tattoos--a star and a heart in the middle of her face--Karyn Bates is not your ordinary board chairwoman. But this is not your ordinary board.

It is the Ventura County Mental Health Board--distinguished in recent months by vicious feuding over how the county’s publicly funded mental health clinics should be run. The board broke new ground earlier this month when it nominated Bates, who suffers from severe manic depression that is controlled by medications, to take over as chairwoman.

It is the first time in the board’s 30-year history that a mentally ill person has held the post. While some laud Bates’ ascent as evidence mental illness is a treatable disease, others privately concede Bates got the position because nobody else wanted it.

Bates was thrust into the leadership role after the previous chairman, John Chaudier, was abruptly dismissed in a split vote by the county Board of Supervisors. Chaudier’s most likely successor, board member and retired psychologist Shlomo Kreitzer, quit the board in protest over Chaudier’s removal.

That left Bates, who as vice chairwoman was next in line. Her new responsibility both delights and petrifies Bates, 52, who presided over her first meeting earlier this month.

“I approached it with great trepidation,” Bates said. “I didn’t know whose toes were going to be stepped on--including mine.”

Bates ended up unintentionally offending Supervisor John Flynn by attempting to cut his comments short. Flynn was infuriated.

“I can’t believe it,” Flynn fumed during the meeting. “I’m going to say what I want to say.”

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Bates took her minor faux pas hard. She says she is intent on projecting a positive image to dispel any notion someone with mental illness cannot handle a position of authority.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be chair,” said Bates, who takes lithium and Zoloft to control alternating episodes of severe depression and manic behavior. “[But] I see this an an opportunity to be a role model and to help others.”

Some Mental Health Board members say Chaudier’s ouster was politically motivated. He supported last year’s ill-fated merger of mental health services with the county’s social services department. And he has been openly critical of Behavioral Health Director David Gudeman, appointed in May to replace former Director Stephen G. Kaplan, who was ousted after the merger’s failure.

Those views put him at odds with three supervisors--Flynn, Judy Mikels and Frank Schillo--who view the failed merger as a mistake that has thrust the county’s entire health system into disarray and cost the county at least $15.3 million.

Chaudier’s abrupt dismissal angered a majority of Mental Health Board members, who had recommended he be reappointed for another term. Saying supervisors were ignoring the wishes of Mental Health Board members, Kreitzer also resigned.

Bates, however, said she refuses to leave the board at a tumultuous time. She intends to continue as chairwoman until her current term ends in nine months and then seek reappointment.

“It’s scary to do this when times are so tense, but I’m willing to give it a try,” said Bates, first appointed to the board in 1997. “It’s the people in front of me and the people around me [at Mental Health Board meetings] that give me the desire to go forward with this. I’m never going to drop out.”

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Some question whether Bates is the right person to lead the board during a time of deep turmoil in the county’s Behavioral Health Department. The county’s mental health clinics are being closely scrutinized by federal and state regulators and significant changes in administration and operations are under way.

The Mental Health Board serves as an advisory group to supervisors on mental health issues, and some suggest a person with top-notch organizational and consensus-building skills would be better suited now.

Flynn, who sits on the Mental Health Board, said he isn’t worried about Bates’ ability to lead the board out of its instability.

“I see no problem,” Flynn said. “Mental illness is really no different than having diabetes. This will go a long way to ending the stigma.”

Chaudier, who recommended Bates for her one-year post as vice chairwoman, said she brings a deeper understanding of the delivery of mental health services.

“A consumer is best qualified to express what the mental health system is all about,” Chaucer said. “They’ve lived it.”

State law mandates counties with a population of at least 100,000 establish a countywide mental health board. Also, 50% of a board’s membership, or their families, must have a mental illness.

Ventura County’s board has just half of its mandated 20 members. They include a real estate agent, attorney, family therapist and the manager of an unemployment office. Bates said she wants to immediately start adding members.

Without a computer or fax machine at home, she concedes her job will be tougher than previous leaders who have had an array of resources. Bates, who has collected state disability payments for many years, says she can’t afford such luxuries.

Her cozy Ventura apartment--decorated with a large yellow happy face on the front door--is federally subsidized. Inside, photographs of her parents and three children line the shelves, which are crowded with plants.

Usually upbeat, she showed a trace of sadness when recalling her tumultuous life in and out of mental hospitals.

Bates grew up in Phoenix and says she had a typical childhood in a middle-class neighborhood. She attended Arcadia High School with a boy who “was always taking pictures”--future film director Steven Spielberg.

After high school, Bates attended a Methodist university in San Diego at the urging of her parents. That is when the first paralyzing bout of depression set in, Bates said.

“I wouldn’t get out of bed,” Bates said. “I was completely depressed. I wasn’t prepared for the world. I was coming from a very secure place and I just lost it.”

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She flunked out of school and moved back home. Believing school was no longer an option, she got married at 19 and started a family. While raising her three children, she had stretches of depression, followed by longer episodes of intense euphoria, she said.

Bates said she compulsively joined every club she could, while keeping a job as a kindergarten teacher’s assistant and caring for her children.

“I was manic, very manic,” Bates said. “[But] I felt I was in total and complete charge.”

In 1979, she wound up in a mental hospital in Santa Cruz. Shortly thereafter, her husband divorced her and took the children. She calls the period after her marriage the “floating years.”

She did not take medication and lived in halfway houses or on the streets. During severe bouts of mania, she rarely slept and did bizarre things. She recalls once walking into heavy traffic, stopping a shocked driver and asking for a cigarette. She stole food and cigarettes and ended up in jail.

In 1982, social workers in Santa Cruz helped Bates move to Ventura to escape an abusive relationship. She arrived with one cardboard box filled with clothes and books, Bates said.

She was admitted to Hillmont Psychiatric Center in Ventura, then lived at a board-and-care home in Oxnard for several years before moving into her own apartment.

Bates now attends Ventura College, where she is studying music. When she finds time, she plays classical music on a piano in her apartment lobby.

She has been taking medication faithfully for six years and believes she is now on stable ground. Her goal is to one day counsel others with mental illness.

But she has no plans to remove the tattoos on her face, which she got on impulse during a manic episode 15 years ago. The tattoos, which draw attention, are a daily reminder of where she has been, Bates said.

She hopes her time as chairwoman will bring attention to the fact that not all mentally ill people are dysfunctional.

“It’s like the heart and the star on my face,” Bates said. “It will open eyes.”