For nine years, I begged Alameda County agencies to provide me with the care I needed to keep an intermittently homeless and schizophrenic ward alive. Last September, nearly 12 years after I became her legal guardian, she fatally overdosed on her meth and fentanyl.
The mental health system that operates in California counties like mine could not save my daughter. And Proposition 1, Mental Health Funding Reform and his March ballot bond measure are our best chance in years to change that.
The 2004 “millionaire’s tax” Mental Health Services Act provided tens of billions to California counties to help people suffering from the most “severe, disabling, and persistent” mental illnesses. produced dollars. Unfortunately, today’s system is unable to keep people with severe mental illness alive, well, and out of prison.
Repeated audits, such as the Mental Illness Policy Organization’s 2013 report “Bait and Switch,” have revealed how mission progress and waste are hampering MHSA implementation. Funding has been provided for health fairs, speaker bureaus, support groups and ‘mental health awareness’ advertising campaigns, but not enough for beds or housing outside prisons for the severely mentally ill. Ta.
Without a physical place to live, stay, and receive treatment, there is no continued care or recovery for family members, many of whom do not even know they are sick. We don’t want them institutionalized. We want them to be treated as soon as their illness appears and before their brains are damaged by persistent mental illness or street drug use.
Early in a nine-year fight for her daughter, the facility continued to discharge her even though they knew she would soon turn to meth and run away. I couldn’t understand why so much MHSA money was being spent so freely when the county was so strict about allocating hospital beds and supportive housing.
At one point, I didn’t even want to eat the (excellent) ham sandwich served at an Alameda County Behavioral Health Department public meeting simply because it was paid for with MHSA money. I’m eating them now because people have to. And because I dare to ask for more from the system.
Initially, my group, FASMI, wasn’t sure what to make of Proposition 1. We initially opposed Senate Bill 326, one of Proposition 1’s legislative bodies, because we felt it did not go far enough to reform the system. It does not include the right to treatment. This is what families want and should be a human right for all people with no-fault illnesses.
But the Prop. 1 package provides many good things that were sorely lacking in the MHSA, including state oversight and county performance evaluations. This also includes substance abuse treatment so that our dual-diagnosed family members don’t fall between stools. It would also shift population-based prevention programs (5% of the MHSA budget) to states, allowing regulators to decide what mental illness prevention means without relying on local lobbying.
Proposition 1 is not intended to solve homelessness. This pertains to the mentally ill, treating a condition that affects 82% of the homeless population at some point, according to a UCSF study. Solving the homeless problem caused by soaring rents and stagnant incomes requires completely different measures.
A vote against Proposition 1 is a vote to maintain a broken system. This measure would give states more control over spending and provide new funding for actual countable facilities that give the system a footprint.
rest assured. This is not blind optimism. Money thrown at the powerless does not necessarily stick, and can create increasingly entitled and entrenched bureaucracies wherever it goes. But California has a chance to lead change and save lives with Proposition 1.
The state is finally starting to force counties to evolve and give the people a unified and accountable system. FASMI and others will closely monitor the implementation of Proposition 1, and we will assist states in monitoring their implementation.
Don’t be fooled by the ham sandwich.
Alison Monroe is a former Oakland editor and co-founder of the Family Advocacy Group for the Severely Mentally Ill (FASMI).
