Behavioral Health & Recovery Services Blog

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors will vote tomorrow on whether to provide $1 million in interim support to residential substance abuse treatment providers struggling to stay afloat while waiting for a more comprehensive solution.  Many local nonprofits like Our Common Ground and Project 90 are on the brink of needing to cut beds and sell facilities as funding dwindles while awaiting word on a Medi-Cal waiver application for clinics with more than 16 beds.  Read the full story in the Daily Journal.

Stephen Kaplan (left), Director of BHRS; San Mateo Mayor Maureen Freschet; Vitka Eisen, Executive Director, HealthRIGHT 360; and Mario, Pioneer Court clinic manager,  cut the ribbon at the grand opening of HealthRIGHT 360’s new outpatient clinic located at 2015 Pioneer Court, Suite B, in San Mateo. The new clinic provides mental health and substance use disorder treatment services including counseling, referrals, meals and more to both adults and youth.  The new treatment center plans to accept all who need assistance getting their lives back on track and is open for walk-ins to attend orientation every weekday from 9 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.  See the story in the Daily Journal.

Dominic Sisti, Ph.D.,  an Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics/Health Policy and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania is the principal author of an article, “Improving Long-term Psychiatric Care: Bring Back the Asylum,” in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Sisti argues that comprehensive, accessible and fully integrated community-based mental health care continues to be an unmet promise. He argues that deinstitutionalization has really been “transinstitutionalization,” resulting in a vicious cycle whereby mentally ill patients move between crisis hospitalization, homelessness and incarceration. The report cites recent studies that show that prisoners with a serious mental illness are two to three times more likely than prisoners without serious mental illness to be reincarcerated, that half of all inmates have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder, and that 15 percent of state inmates are diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. Dr. Sisti says that new models of fully integrated, patient-centered long-term psychiatric care now exist in the United States and that such facilities are needed to provide 21st-century care to patients with chronic, serious mental illness.

Dr. Sisti will be speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California on July 22nd. He along with others will be answering these questions: Read more

Project 90 is forced to downsize as it awaits the ACA, which means less beds for those seeking residential treatment for substance abuse – when timing is most critical.  Read the full story by Samanatha Weigel in The Daily Journal.