Newsom wants to settle the state’s long debate over mental health.

California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke at Los Angeles General Medical Center to urge support for Proposition 1. The proposal is backed by millions in campaign funds but faces opposition from the county.

After California became a state in 1850, one of its first acts was to open the California Asylum, the first of 12 state hospitals intended to care for people with mental illness, in Stockton. It was to be established in

At its peak in 1959, the hospital housed 37,489 people, but by then psychiatric hospitals had become “dens of snakes” that treated patients like prisoners and did little to treat their illnesses. It was getting a bad reputation. Reform efforts had already begun.

Eight years later, newly elected Governor Ronald Reagan launched a three-person government initiative aimed at reducing hospital populations and involuntary commitments and redirecting people with mental illness to treatment in their own communities. signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, named after its legislative architect.

But as journalist Dan Moraine explained in a thoroughly researched article last year, LPS is a product of political trade-offs, with a lack of funding for community-based treatment and housing; It was ultimately rejected by three legislative sponsors.

Despite this, hospitals continued to become depopulated, and seven of them were closed. This has left countless mentally ill Californians and their families in limbo, struggling to find and pay for care in a jumble of private and public clinics.

For decades, politicians, mental health experts, and patient advocates have been at loggerheads over this apparent crisis. Democrats blame President Reagan for signing LPS without funding for local services, but Republicans point out that Democrats controlled the budget process.

In 2004, 37 years after LPS was passed, voters passed Proposition 63, which imposed an additional tax on incomes over $1 million and earmarked the proceeds for local mental health services. The effort was sponsored by Darrell Steinberg, then a state representative from Sacramento who had a history of mental health issues in his own family.

Over the past two decades, Proposition 63 has poured billions of dollars into these services. However, California remains home to a large number of unhoused and untreated victims of mental illness, many of whom are among the approximately 200,000 homeless people in the state. .

While running for governor in 2018, Gavin Newsom pledged to make mental health reform a top priority, calling for a “chain of command” to standardize care across the state and hold caregivers accountable. Ta.

Newsom first secured approval from the CARE court to at least partially repeal LPS’ ban on involuntary commitments. This would allow people with schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses to receive treatment involuntarily after a court-like hearing.

Proposition 1, the only statewide measure on the March 5 ballot, is Mr. Newsom’s second major move, even if it is politically weak, as Prop. 63 has increased revenue (up to $3 billion annually) over the past two years. ) has faced widespread opposition from the county. Decades.