In response to our report on the Board’s two-day self-promoting workshop, Mazie Malone asked: “I would like clarification on the statement about most homeless people not being ‘crazy’ enough to be reimbursable for Mental Health services? I think it is harmful in that it gives the illusion there is nothing to be done to get people on the trajectory of stability and healing. Of course if one is lacking MediCal/Medicare or other health insurance it is hard to get a treatment bed, which are scarce anyways. Most programs and services can assist clients with obtaining their MediCal.”
I disagree that an impression was given that there is nothing to be done to help the mentally ill who are not “severely” mentally ill and therefore denied the County’s gold-plated “specialty mental health services” that taxpayers pay more than $30 million a year to private companies for — for a relatively small clientele in the low hundreds, more than half of whom are not adults.
On Thursday, Supervisor Maureen Mulheren told her facebook fans the following, blithely assuming that the mentally ill and their family members across the County are hanging on her every facebook post for mental health advice:
“Yesterday at the Behavioral Health Advisory Board [meeting] we did a basic conversation, and Dr. [Jenine] Miller [Behavioral Health Director] presented for about two hours on what specialty mental health is, what it does and how you can access services, who the service providers are, services they provide through specialty mental health because I think something that gets lost a lot is that the county literally only provides specialty mental health. So very specific diagnosis. Partnership Health [Obamacare/private insurance if you have it] does provide mild and moderate mental health needs so you can access those services through places like Adventist Health and Hillside health clinic and not through the county. So there’s a lot of information. The way that we talk about mental health sometimes get all lumped in together. Your average person with anxiety is not gonna be seen through the County system of care. That’s gonna be somebody that is schizophrenic or a different type of disorder that’ll be using those services. So I’ll be sharing more information about that and the services that are provided in our community not only through the county though, because I’m in meetings I’m aware of other resource resources that can help our community. One of the conversations that we had yesterday was about the crisis line and generally the way that it works. As far as I know. We tried something and maybe it hasn’t worked for us and it is sort of off the radar, but I have seen our service providers including Tapestry, RCS, Anchor [the Schraeders]. What I’ve seen them doing is evolving their system of care in a way that can better serve our community. So what I did hear yesterday at that meeting was that we can now use that 855 crisis number not only for people that are in danger harming themselves or others which we should definitely… If somebody is in immediate danger or has a physical injury please call 911. But that we can use that number as a way for somebody from the crisis team to be sent out to support somebody that may not need law-enforcement. So you can save in your phone the Mendocino county crisis number 855-838-0404 and use that number to call if you see maybe an individual that is on the street or in a parking lot that seems to be either disoriented or acting out in some type of way that doesn’t seem like they’re doing harm to themselves or others, but may need some type of resource to come out. You can use that number to let them know they’re not an immediate danger but that you want a mobile crisis to be called out to help an individual. Try to get the best description. Certainly I’m born and raised here so I know a lot of individual’s names. If you don’t, try to get height, skin color, hair color, description of what they’re wearing, that type of thing to be able to relay that information. And as we evolve the system of care to match the community’s expectations, I think there’s just a lot of room for improvement. As far as outreach goes, generally we know where people tend to congregate and how can we get to them before they’re experiencing some type of mental health issue. And of course, as we work through care court, as we work through Board changes and work with the courts program with the sheriff’s office, it’s always also really important to remember that we have human beings in our community and they have rights and they get to make choices especially if they’re adults. So we’re gonna have to work on that as a community, thinking about how can we support people that don’t want to get into services. And encourage them to build relationships to help them get into services and just generally help everyone in our community be able to be more successful and I look forward to sharing more information, but for now save that number in your phone and keep it in case you need it.”
Notice anything missing from the Mental Health picture in the Supervisor’s run-down?
Where’s Measure B? Where’s drug abuse? Where’s the new wing of the jail? Where’s the Psychiatric Health Facility?
Mendo has accumulated over $50 million in Measure B funds, and counting. The Measure requires that at least 25% of that money be spent on mental health and substance abuse treatment, which would more than $12 million so far. (The measure was passed in 2017.) Yet, in all those years less than $1 million has been spent on anything remotely like mental health and substance abuse treatment. (Mainly the crisis van which does not count as “treatment.”).
So, getting back to Ms. Malone’s point: We have a County mental health system (as described by Supervisor Mulheren) which only deals with “specialty” mental health cases and everybody else gets sloughed off on Partnership Health and the Adventists or the Ukiah Clinic (both in Ukiah, by the way; what about outside Ukiah?) And then, only if they have insurance, and if those unaccountable agencies choose to do anything by way of “treatment.” The drug-addled mentally ill, many of whom end up in jail because even simple possession of drugs (or “under the influence”) is crime enough to get them into jail where they might get some treatment via the jail’s Naphcare contract — not from the County’s “specialty” mental health providers.
Perhaps my use of the phrase “not crazy enough,” was a bit flippant. But the point is that Mendo can and should — and MUST according to the text of Measure B — use Measure B funds to do a lot more than what they’re doing (or not doing) now.
If the County’s mental health system is so great, why is there no outcry from Mulheren, or the Board, or the Measure B committee, or the Behavioral Health Advisory Board, or former Sheriff Allman, or the family and friends of mentally ill or drug addled people to substantially increase the services for the people Measure B was intended to address and help and which the Measure specifically calls for? Mendo should start by doing what Measure B calls for. After that we can discuss whether a negative impression is given by use of the word “crazy.”
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