Board Votes to Shut 7 Mental Health Centers in County : Social services: Lack of funding is cited as reason. Remaining clinics will have to absorb care of patients.

As part of a yearlong effort to recover from deep state mental health funding cuts, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to close seven of the county’s public mental health centers, one of them a crisis evaluation unit for the most dangerous patients.

The cuts--approved 4 to 1 with Supervisor Kenneth Hahn dissenting--were the last stage of the county’s effort to keep the mental health system largely intact. The county last year found itself $41.9 million short of mental health funds because of cuts by the state and others.

Two weeks ago, supervisors approved taxes on utilities, amusement park admission tickets and dump fees to raise an estimated $18.3 million for mental health, leaving the programs about $2 million short.

Despite the closures, which will begin March 1, current patients will be referred to other centers and no one will be dropped from the system, said Roberto Quiroz, director of the county mental health department. His first proposal sought to end care to more than half the county’s 58,000 patients.

Some patients will be referred to clinics up to 19 miles away, a situation mental health advocates said adds stress and hardship for patients, many of whom do not drive.

One patient at the Compton Mental Health Center, where 650 receive treatment, said it will take her up to two hours by bus to get to the next closest clinic, which is four miles away.

“You’re talking about closing a place that is helping us,” she said.

Representatives of mental health employee unions voiced particular concern about the closure of the Crisis Evaluation Unit in the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk.

The unit provides round-the-clock observation for more than 100 patients a month, many of them combative or suicidal. Police and sheriff’s officers in the San Gabriel Valley frequently take such patients there.

Neither of the centers to be used for referrals--in Arcadia and Cerritos--is open 24 hours a day.

“How many of those clients are going to end up in jail and at what cost?” asked Guido DeRienzo, representative of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union to which psychiatric social workers belong. “You’re just shifting the problems of mental health to law enforcement.”

Supervisor Ed Edelman, who engineered much of the mental health system bailout, said that the closures were necessary largely because of safety concerns.

Quiroz said that the Norwalk crisis unit is housed in a 1917-era building that hinders staff observation and treatment. The Compton clinic has had vandalism and staff recruitment problems that have left it understaffed and unsafe for employees, he said.

Other closures include the mental health service center in La Crescenta, the case management office in North Hollywood and continuing care clinics in Long Beach, Pomona and in a county area near the Crenshaw Shopping Center.