San Diego County details mental health spending

The county's efforts to overhaul its behavioral health systems includes $218.6 million in state mental health funding that covered services for 71,000 people this fiscal year, county officials reported Tuesday.

The report tallied spending from the 2004 Mental Health Services Act, a California state law paid for by a 1 percent tax on personal income over $1 million per year, according to the California Department of Health Care Services.

The funding has been integral to the county's efforts to build a mental health care and substance abuse treatment system "focused on prevention and continuous care, rather than perpetual crisis," the board letter stated.

It aims to reduce what officials refer to as a revolving door of emergency room visits and psychiatric holds, in which mentally ill or addicted people are repeatedly treated for mental health crises, stabilized and released. Without consistent follow-up, many fall out of contact with mental health providers and experience subsequent mental health emergencies.

Difficulty finding or keeping employment or housing creates further instability for many patients, authorities say.

San Diego County Behavioral Health Director Luke Bergmann said this year's funding will include $53 million to help pay for special needs housing; $28.8 million for "Project One for All," which connects patients to housing, mental health and substance abuse treatment and case management; and $115 million for "No Place Like Home," which provides permanent housing for adults and children with mental illness.

Highlights of the spending include $14.7 million for "full-service partnerships" that involve an array of services to 15,000 children and adults, including $6.5 million for school-based services, Bergmann said.

Another $12.8 million is designated for crisis stabilization units, which provide an alternative to emergency room care and feature facilities designed to be calming for people in psychiatric crises. Those programs include two new units opening in North County this year, he said.

The need for these services has grown through the pandemic, as San Diegans report increased rates of anxiety, depression and substance abuse.

"It's been much worse over the pandemic than other periods," Bergmann said in a separate presentation during the Board of Supervisors'COVID-19 update this week.

Suicide threats and attempts have increased, he said, and rise in direct proportion to pandemic surges.

"The single most harrowing statistic is people dying of unintentional drug overdoses," he said, citing a "massive and tragic uptick" of deaths involving the powerful opiod fentanyl, which is sometimes mixed into other street drugs.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.

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