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Yahoo!“Roger, on a scale of one to five in intensity, how would you rate the last week?” asked John Gaddis, a counselor with the Sanctuary Psychiatric Centers.
“A four in both directions. I’ve had feelings of total euphoria followed by thoughts of hurting myself. But I’m not worried yet. It’s not a five.”
Or maybe I am worried. Maybe the proposed budget cuts to mental health in Santa Barbara County will be adopted. Maybe my treatment will end. Maybe my housing will be revoked. Maybe I’ll be a five and find myself without help.
Four years ago, I graduated from UCSB at the top of my class. Three years ago, I started a company and purchased a home. Two years ago, I became severely bipolar followed by divorce, foreclosure, bankruptcy, and shame. I would not be alive today if not for the help of Sanctuary and its staff.
Yet cuts proposed by Ann Detrick, director of Santa Barbara County Department of Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services (ADMHS), would seriously injure Sanctuary and other invaluable programs. “We’re trying not to completely cut someone off from the services,” Detrick reassures us. To Detrick, I, along with the mentally ill and homeless of Santa Barbara County, respectfully reply: Try harder.
The problem of caring for the mentally ill does not go away just because the budget to care for them is substantially reduced. These proposed cuts will force hundreds into our jails, into our emergency rooms, and onto the streets.
Ben Ciccati
Society has never fully decided what it should do with its mentally ill. As recently as the 1950s, doctors in the U.S. treated the mentally ill with crude and radical “quick-fix solutions.” Rosemary Kennedy, the sister of President John F. Kennedy, complained of moodiness at the age of 23. She was given a lobotomy — a procedure that involves drilling holes in the patient’s head and destroying tissue in the frontal lobes by injecting alcohol. Forty thousand of these were performed in the United States alone. They generally left patients incapacitated for life. Their subsequent behavior mirrored mental retardation. In 1968, Rosemary’s sister founded the Special Olympics in her honor. Next time you think of the Special Olympics, reflect on why it exists. It exists because a bipolar woman was rendered so incapacitated by anachronistic treatment that she would’ve qualified to participate.
Some of us are too symptomatic to raise a voice, too ashamed to be exposed. But not me. It is my duty to advocate for those who can’t. At the April 22 Board of Supervisors meeting, more than 80 individuals, including many consumers of mental health services, spoke against the draconian budget cuts, supported by hundreds who chose to listen. After absorbing voices trembling with trepidation, boiling from anger, or filled with disgust, 1st District Supervisor Salud Carbajal remarked, “I’m losing sleep at night because of these issues.”
If he’s losing sleep, imagine the nightmares we must endure. The fact that I am compelled — at risk of lasting societal stigma — to beseech the supervisors not to impose what is planned means that several attempts at compromise have failed. Annmarie Cameron, executive director of the Mental Health Association, said the process of working with county officials was “flawed.” Mike Foley, executive director of the Casa Esperanza Homeless Shelter, characterized attempts to work with ADMHS officials as “a deeply dishonest experience.”
Many of us felt relief after the last Board of Supervisors meeting. Detrick’s proposed cuts weren’t, according to the supervisors, “creative enough.” The supervisors drafted a motion to explore more options, but even Supervisor Carbajal admitted that “… unless the board is able to do something in June, this will be the plan.” There’s a legitimate concern that Detrick will not seek creative inspiration.
In fact, it doesn’t require an excess of inspiration to entertain different options.
We could increase certain fees for service. We could tap into the county’s strategic reserve. Or, ideally, we could increase the percentage of the county’s general fund that goes to mental health. Currently, the mental health budget constitutes only 2 percent of the fund, compared to California counties’ average of 6 percent.
I realize that some cuts must be made.
Programs like Sanctuary Psychiatric Centers, the one I depend on, could sustain a cut of 15-20 percent and still continue, albeit with great struggle, to operate and function. Those are compromises I see as reasonable.
Another problem is where the cuts are focused. The ADMHS budget is being decreased to $26.4 million — such a decrease balances the budget. Half the cuts come from county contracts with Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) providing services for the homeless and mentally ill. They are to be cut 60 percent, from $10 million to $4.2 million. But cuts to CBOs make little fiscal sense. “CBOs definitely provide a bigger bang for our dollar,” Supervisor Carbajal conceded. And the cuts target only the mental health division. Let’s consider cutting the alcohol or drug portions.
Like a lobotomy, the current proposal is a “quick-fix solution.” It is a lobotomy of our budget that will render our services functionally inert; it is a lobotomy of the true compassion and empathy and service that represents the people of Santa Barbara County.
Roger Thompson is a client of Santa Barbara County Mental Health Services.
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