Assistance for Mentally Ill

Robert Paul Liberman, H. Richard Lamb, and William Davis’ article, “A Plan for Rescuing the Mentally Ill” (Commentary, Sept. 6), was right on target. Individuals with mental illness in the County of Los Angeles are some of the greatest victims of California’s economic downturn.

Portals, a nonprofit mental health rehabilitation agency that works with homeless adults with psychiatric disabilities, serves 107 members in five locations in South-Central L.A. and the Mid-Wilshire and West Los Angeles-Santa Monica areas. Our services include the type of assertive case management cited by the authors, incorporating social and educational experiences, job training and sheltered employment, all designed to encourage independence and a successful return to the general community. The good news is that nearly 80% of our members make the transition from homelessness to independence successfully. A recent federal study, which lambasted the state of mental health responses in all 50 states, cited Portals as one shining example of success.

Portals is particularly proud of the Corporate Cookie, a cookie, brownie and muffin bakery providing sheltered vocational training, at which members have the opportunity to develop specific work skills.

In addition, the county Department of Mental Health has created a pilot program for which Portals and five other mental health agencies have been selected to coordinate services for 500 of the highest cost utilizers of mental health services in the county--services that now cost the taxpayer an average of $50,000 per client per year. The pilot project, designed to lower those costs by over 50%, has just begun and will save the county a staggering $14 million per year!

TIMOTHY GREENLEAF, Portals, Board Chairman

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The medical community approach to treating the mentally disabled deserves the acknowledgment of your article. We also commend you for recognizing that there needs to be a better way for individuals to re-integrate into the community through community-based treatments. We at A Community of Friends offer a leap in the treatment of the mentally disabled by recognizing such a need for independent living.

We have developed 230 units offering adults a way to live beyond just transitional housing. We offer an alternative treatment to the dependency and expense of traditional institutionalized living, which includes mental health support as well as the possibility of maintaining a full-time job while living in a non-institutionalized setting. Our residents learn interactive communication, many for the first time in their adult lives, and become actively good neighbors and taxpayers. Ours is the only such program of its kind in Southern California but is serving as a national model and as hope for those who suffer mental disability and the frequent social stigmatization that illness brings.

ROBERT A. SANBORN, Exec. Dir., A Community of Friends, Los Angeles