The number of mental competency court cases is going through the roof in Los Angeles County and officials are not sure why. From 2014 to 2015, the rate increased by 50 percent. Between 2010 and 2015, the annual number of cases shot up from 944 to more than 3,500. Mark Gale, criminal justice chairman for the L.A. County Council of the National Alliance on Mental Illness says the explanation lies in the acute shortage of long-term care facilities for the severely mentally ill.
“We’ve had a large expansion in mental health funding through the Mental health Service Act/Proposition 63 since 2004,” says Gale. “That proposition never bought one bed.”
Gale says there is an alarming shortage of beds for the severely mentally ill in the state. That’s because all the new funding for mental health was diverted under Prop 63 to pay for voluntary outpatient clinics. He says 26 out of California’s 58 counties have no in-patient psychiatric services at all.
“That’s for adults,” says Gale. “The number [in-patient facilities] for children would scare you to death.”
He says the state has lost 44 facilities between 1995 and 2011 – a 24 percent loss and 32 percent of its bed capacity, according to Gale.
Californians who suffer from severe mental illness but choose not to go to a voluntary clinic wind up living in the streets, often turning to petty crimes to pay for their drug habits. Many are a danger to themselves and to the public.
For more information on mental health issues and resources in Los Angeles County, go to www.namilacc.org
Gale was a guest on 790 KABC’s McIntyre in the Morning Show with Doug McIntyre and Terrie Rae Elmer.