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TO: California Treatment Advocacy Coalition
FROM: Carla Jacobs & Randall Hagar
DATE: May 18, 2000
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WE’RE IN SUSPENSE

AB1800 has been placed in the Appropriation Committee's "suspense file." This is standard operating procedure for any bill with a considerable amount of funding attached. In a couple of weeks we will know if the bill, with or without the desired financial backing, makes it out of Appropriations. We will keep you apprised.

Money is the big word in Sacramento right now. The Governor's May budget revision has a proposed increase in spending of approximately $120 million for mental illness over last year's expenditures. This sounds impressive until one considers the need. In the revise document, the Governor himself acknowledges that over 300,000 qualified adult and 130,000 Californian children receive minimal or no publicly funded mental health care. That the Governor is not allocating more funding to people with mental illness in this time of bounty is discrimination, plain and simple. No person suffering from any other medical disorder would be allowed to languish on our streets while the rest of us experience prosperity.

But the $120 million is only a starting point for negotiations between the Governor and the legislature. Assemblymember Helen Thomson has attached $350 million to AB1800. Senator Burton has requested $300 million for a variety of mental health initiatives. We must help those legislators, who know that funding treatment for mental illness will actually save both financial costs and human tragedy.

Following is an Open Letter to the Governor. Please send it to your local newspaper editor and ask him or her to run an editorial on the need for California to share its bounty with the most vulnerable of populations. A society is judged by how it treats its weakest members--California is currently bordering on infamy.

Also, in your own words please write Governor Davis. Make him understand how imperative it is that AB1800 passes and that funding is available to make effective. AB1800 will provide the structure necessary to make effective use of existing resources as well as the resources we beg him to provide.

Governor Gray Davis
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, Ca 95814
Fax #916-445-4633

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OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR DAVIS

In this time of unprecedented prosperity, the members of the California Treatment Advocacy Coalition call upon you to share the fruits of the state's economic bounty with those who suffer from severe mental illness.

In the May budget revise, you state that 350,000 qualified Californian adults and 130,000 Californian children receive minimum or no public mental health care. As a result, 18,000 with severe mental illness are in California prisons. Another 50,000 with severe mental illness sleep on our streets and countless thousands more languish without treatment in family homes.

These neglected people have treatable medical conditions. Not to provide them parity in treatment with other diseases is discrimination. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are neurobiological brain disorders, first cousins to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Like most medical conditions, the earlier and more continual treatment is given the better the prognosis. When untreated, these illnesses can become intractable.

California knows how to provide effective and successful treatment so that people with mental illness can become productive members of society. With the passage of AB1800 to reform the involuntary treatment laws, we will have the structure necessary to make effective use of the resources that exist and those yet to come. We do not have to have future generations of wandering nomads eating out of trashcans, sleeping under bridges, or barricaded in their rooms in family homes.

Show your caring by increasing the funding provided in this year's budget.

The proposed budget offers but a pittance towards this tragedy.

Mental illness is not a one-time affair. We call upon you for more funding which would be continuing and flexible so all counties have an opportunity to close local gaps in their particular mental health treatment system.

We also ask you to demand accountability in the spending of these funds. Systems have to look at not only those they serve, but also to those they do not serve.

Sincerely,

The Members of the California Treatment Advocacy Center