Part two of our Mental Health Services investigation looks at the Mendocino County Mental Health Board
Before this summer”s murderous spree made headlines around the world, Mendocino County Mental Heath Board (MHB) chairman Guy Grenny was looking for an additional board member from the Coast.
Now, the MHB has its most controversial applicant ever, Jim Bassler, father of Aaron Bassler. Aaron was responsible for killing two prominent North Coast men, Jere Melo and Matt Coleman, before being killed by police gunfire himself.
During the 36-day search for Aaron, the elder Bassler made a crusade of how his efforts to obtain mental health care for his recalcitrant and degenerating son were ignored by a callous system.
Now, Jim wants to join that system in an effort to make a difference for others.
“I have a lot of information on how the mental health system does not work, not just from my own experience but from many other people who have contacted me with their own horror stories during all this,” Jim Bassler said. “I have all of this negative information. Now I hope to learn something from them about how the system does work, the positive. Maybe we can put the two together and make something from it.”
Before going to the Oct. 19 meeting of the MHB held in Willits, to volunteer, the elder Bassler was confronted by a top county official who pointed the finger of blame at him.
Some board members were taken aback by the criticism, but Bassler understands the anger.
“I really don”t want to name names; it serves no purpose. Some people do blame me for not protecting society from what happened,” Bassler said. “I take that blame. I often think, I should have done this,” or I could have done that.” I”m responsible for three deaths in some way; there must have been something I could have done.”
Bassler thinks Laura”s Law might help prevent future tragedies.
“These same people who think we should have done something about Aaron wanted me to work miracles without any mental health training. How could I protect society all by myself when they didn”t seem to care, when we were looking for help?” said Bassler.
Laura”s Law, when approved by any county board of supervisors, gives family members, roommates and certain officials who observe a person in both denial and mental decline, the ability to initiate a process that can lead to court-ordered assisted outpatient therapy (AOT). Jim Bassler could have referred Aaron under such a system.
Mendocino County supervisors will consider Laura”s Law over the next several months.
After hearing from Bassler and hearing about the controversy, the MHB recommended unanimously that supervisors appoint him.
“I hope that they will see [Bassler] as highly qualified for service on the Mental Health Board as we are searching for better ways to see that the family members of persons with serious mental problems are given better access to the system in order to get appropriate help,” Grenny said.
The violence of 2011 has helped to generate more interest in mental health and the MHB — not all good for ordinary people struggling with mental illness. Grenny has expressed fears publicly that the public will now needlessly fear mental patients. Aaron Bassler was never a mental patient, nor apparently even diagnosed as mentally ill, although his family believed him to be increasingly delusional and paranoid.
What does Jim Bassler hope to accomplish at the MHB?
“I really can”t say at this point. I”m going to be there to learn and to find out what”s possible,” he said.
Mental Health Boards are the product of a more idealistic and more generous age.
In 1955, with 35,000 people living in California mental hospitals, society was looking for how to treat mental illness in ways other than long-term confinement. Psychotherapy and psychology were emerging as hot new professions. A new drug, thorazine, seemed to promise mentally ill people the ability to live relatively normal lives.
In 1957, the California Legislature passed the Short-Doyle Act, providing funding for mandated county mental health boards. During the 1960s, state funding for local services increased, with mental health board funding going from 50 percent state funded to 70 percent to 90 percent in 1969. At the same time, federal funding to mental hospitals was cut as part of the creation of what is now Medicare.
During the 1970s, patient releases went from a stream to a flood when anti-government movements such as Prop 13 cut funding. The combination of increased patient freedoms and funding cuts resulted in the emergence of a large, permanent homeless population and thousands of people self-medicating on the streets with illegal drugs, state histories show.
The 1992-93 realignment of government in Sacramento resulted in the removal of many county mandates giving county supervisors the option of whether to fund local mental health boards created during the citizen government movements of the 1960s.
Mendocino County chose not to fund the local MHB, Valerie Williamson, treasurer of the MHB, said.
“I don”t know of any other county where supervisors give zip to their mental health board, said Williamson, who lives in Mendocino.
The chronic lack of money has caused effective local programs that were in place to slip backwards over the past few years.
“No money means no vision. We had great, great programs going,” said Williamson.
The MHB is still defined under state law as the body responsible for defining the direction of mental health care locally.
The North Coast has seen county mental health staff drop from 10 to five. Deep cuts to mental health staff and denial of mental health services to people not meeting strict criteria have both been championed by the department during budget discussions. The Red House on Franklin Street, where county clients used to drop in for rest, respite and counseling was closed. Williamson fears a continued decline in mental health services, especially on the Coast. Williamson said the supervisors have been too busy, year after year, to even hear the MHB make an annual report.
“Guy [Grenny] finally went down and got us on the agenda. They cut us off midway through. They promised to do a working session with us where we could talk back and forth. That never happened,” said Williamson.
She fears Laura”s Law may not pass here, even with Nevada County, where the law originated, showing it has saved money.
“I don”t personally see it coming here. [Supervisors] don”t think there is money for it and they can be shortsighted,” she said.
In 1993, along with abolishing many local boards and cutting mandates and funding obligations, the state restructured mental health boards to demand that mental health consumers and families of the mentally ill have a much greater role.
Mental health consumers or their families must fill ten of the 15 seats, with the other five to be filled by “public interest” applicants. Interest in the MHB is now at a peak.
Along with Jim Bassler at the Oct. 19 meeting, John Baird applied to represent the first district and Denise Gorny has applied to represent the third district, although Bassler was the only one of the three to appear in Willits. If all three applicants are approved, 12 of the 15 seats would be filled.
According to Williamson, those who say the MHB accomplishes little are wrong. She details how the Mental Health Board was instrumental in numerous changes to local services. One change allowed people with dual-diagnosis to get treatment. In the past, they were turned away as addicts, despite mental illness being the underlying cause of both their addictions and bizarre behavior.
Although Jim Bassler has been out front pushing for Laura”s Law as a way for families to stop the downward spiral of a mental patient who is in denial, he understands the arguments of opponents. Many mental advocates oppose Laura”s Law because it represents taking away hard-fought mental patient civil rights.
“I don”t go lightly with the whole problem,” Bassler said. “I really believe in civil rights, I don”t want the government involved in my life any more than I have to.
“Neither am I very confident of psychiatrists and the mental health profession; there are good ones and bad ones and it”s very hard to tell the difference.
“Psychiatry is a pretty primitive science,” he adds.
This would be the third volunteer political job for Jim Bassler, a former commercial fisherman. In 2009, he was appointed as a regional stakeholder during the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative process. He took his seat on that board nearly sure he would be railroaded by inflexible opponents of all fishing and would be reviled by fellow fishermen.
Instead, he met reasonable people on all sides.
“The MLPAI experience gave me a lot of confidence in the community. What we did was way outside the norm for the state,” he said. “Here, everybody moved to the middle and made something happen.
The Marine Life Protection Act Initiative utilized a public private process where locals were given a voice in the creation of new protected areas of the ocean where taking of ocean life will be restricted.
He thinks cooperation might be a model for other seemingly intractable problems — like mental health.
“If you put reasonable people together in a room, even if they have totally different views, they can solve problems, not like what we see in Congress.
“I think there are lawyers and judges and people in the mental health system out there who have good ideas and would like to see the system do a better job,” he said.
Bassler fears he may have to take a break at some point. He hasn”t been sleeping much. Family members haven”t figured out how to have a funeral for Aaron, much less grieve.
“I”m pretty wound up and all of this keeps me upset. I”m not entirely sure it”s good for me, in a way I think I have to do it,” Bassler said.
The MHB”s next meeting, a joint meeting with the Mental Health Service Act stakeholders, will be Nov. 16 at 10 a.m. at 825 S. Franklin St. in Fort Bragg.
A subsequent story in this series will explore how MHSA funding is being spent.
Email Frank Hartzell at frankhartzell@gmail.com.
