MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: 442

Back in the 1990s when I presided over the Mental Health Calendar I often called our “team” members into my chambers and told them that this was the only area in our judicial system that I knew of where everybody was on the same side. That is to say, we all wanted the people who were the subject of our efforts to have the best and freest lives that they could. But if they then did not have the ability to be completely on their own, we all wanted them both to be safe and to get the best treatment that would allow them to progress as much as possible. Tragically, since that time politics has interceded to keep many of these people from being “wrongly confined.” So now many mentally ill people are “living” on the streets, or in jails or prisons, and these are truly the most costly results, both socially for the subjects and society, and financially for the taxpayers.

As a result of the politics, for example, the Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa, which I toured several times while on this calendar and was doing a wonderful job, has been closed. This public facility provided a secure “campus” where the subject people were able to get their treatments but also, depending upon their mental status, move about freely, play volleyball and have picnic lunches, etc. The land and facility are still there, but it is not operating. Similarly, the healthcare institute at Camarillo, California has now been converted into a California State University. Many fiscal conservatives favored those results for the “cost-savings” that would result, and many of their liberal counterparts did as well so that the “involuntarily committed people” would have greater freedoms. But there was no system to take its place, and this has resulted in our current situation. So where are we now? Virtually no programs to address the needs of these people, which mostly means homelessness, disease, suffering and self-medicating drug addictions. In my view, the last thirty to forty years have witnessed one of the cruelest hoaxes of self-deception in our history, which is massive state-sponsored neglect!

Many people need help because they simply cannot live healthy or productive lives without it. And the evidence of this is clear for all to see with our homelessness problems! So please educate yourself about this situation, and help us change the politics from one of intentional neglect to one of programmed and caring assistance. It is the least we can do!