peach-faced lovebird Agapornis roseicollis | ||||||||
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Dear Carla, You have always said you and I our pretty close on the issue to involuntary treatment. [For] all of the what-ifs that I mentioned in a prior posting, that I think, you or any other informed person with an interest in reforming mental health, and the service delivery [would support]. If [they] were implemented, then there would not be a need for changes in LPS, CA. You are right that the current state of affairs in CA is a disgrace and is catastrophic. In magnitude of 30-40 years of neglect. Keeping in mind some of the new bandaid funding, well intentioned and much needed and deserved, the new pilot programs Steinberg’s AB34, AB2034, some of the promised money for the City of Los Angeles, and the County — it’s a drop in the bucket. The main point between you and me still remains if we were to be seriously committed to changing the quality of the mental health system in the state of CA, much more would still be needed re the current infrastructure — specifically, [re] all of that shopping list of additional resources needed to maintain a completely bankrupt system. To return to the issue of AB1800, there has been no shortage of 5150s in L.A. County. There has been no shortage in 14-day holds. What there is a shortage of is treatment, which is why the average 14-hold consists of 7-days. Contracted hospitals even when given advanced clinical history on clients and identifying the presenting criteria, either as voluntary or requesting certified permits to place holds, still discharge and dump their clients, without any discharge planning, to the street. And [they] routinely refuse to put consumers on t-con holds, when they need to be because of money. They, the hospitals, make more discharging patients, in and out like McDonald’s, than appropriately screening and t-conning clients into Dept. 95, even when there is clear and convincing evidence of repeated hospitalizations, and continued history of non-compliance to treatment. There have been a couple of cases [where people have] gone directly to Dr. Southard, and Dr. Shaner, and filed official patient’s rights complaints. Patient’s Rights themselves, has said that when a hospital acts in this way, they are violating someone’s rights, by frankly refusing appropriate care. The 12th floor at DMH, says we’ll keep an eye on these hospitals and if they don’t provide the appropriate services, they won’t be paid. Interesting. The bottom line. If everybody did their job the way they were suppose to do it in the first place, and there were adequate resources in place, and a system flexible enough, then we would have that First Class Mental Health System Dr. Southard likes to talk about; unfortunately we don’t. What we do have is a fragmented, underfunded bunch of burn-outs, collecting civil service protection/money. And all the re-organization, and musical chairs in the world from the Dept. of Mental Health, including all the chopped down trees [used for] all the bureaucratic memos will not change this. They talk about incremental change — I want to puke. Emergency services, after two years of continued pressure to and from the Board of Supervisors, has got us what? Now one can look at a problem from a bunch of different viewpoints: big problem, doing the best we can do right now, not doing very good at all, hope to do better. I hope they do better. My wife has just informed me that a mental health consumer in Sacramento County killed two patients in a county clinic, possibly wounding a few more, one woman breaking a leg during an escape. [He] goes to a restaurant, kills the manager, wounds a couple more, goes home quietly, where his brother, an off-duty police officer, got him to surrender peacefully. Has the whole damned world gone mad, or is it me? Despite this another horrendous case, who could have predicted this??? Perhaps and I say perhaps if we had better services, this could have been prevented, God only knows. It’s a real mess. I still stand by my beliefs re the voluntary approach. The involuntary sections of the LPS are more then adequate if the damned fools in this business would do their jobs. It remains [for] citizens and advocates, like you and I, to make sure they do. G. MinskL.A. | ||||||||
 P.S. Love you to Carla — and if anyone has a problem with that, too bad. —gm
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