(August 3, 2015) A significant portion of the mentally ill population in California are either warehoused in jails and prisons – widely regarded as the country’s de facto mental institutions – or left homeless and untreated on the streets.
But police and others worried about the number of mentally ill homeless in Sacramento are at a loss, as the shrinking number of public psychiatric beds and mental health funding creates a grim reality that is both literally and figuratively taxing for all involved (“People with mental illness left homeless, helpless,” KXTV, July 14).
"I don't remember it ever being this bad,” said Sacramento Police officer Michelle Lazark.
US census data estimates that there are nearly 400 homeless people with severe mental illness in Sacramento alone, and 40,000 statewide.
Sacramento law enforcement are concerned by the number of mentally ill homeless but are handcuffed by funding cuts and policy changes, which continue to leave the most severely ill untreated, said Lazark.
"The [problem] is that we've lost 2,000 in-patient hospital beds for psychiatric patients in the last 15 years," explained Randall Hagar, Government Affairs Director of the California Psychiatric Association. "We have a 45-year-old treatment law that needs to be updated that is really not serving people well."
Hagar notes that a large percentage of severely mentally ill Californians are criminalized and end up in prison – a huge cost for taxpayers and an injustice to families and patients.
"Just to house somebody in a jail, I think costs $45,000 to $50,000 per year," Hagar said. "And then if you add treatment costs on top of that, you've got a very expensive situation for someone who's mentally ill."
Indeed, the Department of Corrections reports that it houses 30,000 mentally ill inmates – roughly a third of the entire prison population.
It would cost approximately $1.5 billion to treat all 30,000 inmates in the prison system with average counseling and housing expenses totaling $50,000.
In contrast, the estimated cost for psychiatric care in a community-based treatment system is estimated at about $30,000 – a $600 million a year savings in what most experts and families of patients believe is the best system for now.
Hopefully, Sacramento will follow the lead of other California counties, like Kern County, and authorize Laura’s Law when it comes up for vote later this year.
Read the Treatment Advocacy Center report “Considerations for Demonstrating the Cost Effectiveness of AOT Services” to learn more.
(Photo: Mindsay Mohan/Flickr)
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