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Posts published in “Focus & Commentary”

San Diego County BHS Community Program Planning (CPP) plan is older than Twitter.

To the best of our knowledge, the last time San Diego County drafted a Community Program Planning (CPP) process plan and budget, used to describe the ways the Behavioral Health Services (BHS) would meaningfully engage people with serious mental-health issues, their families and other stakeholders, was in 2005, a year before Twitter was born. 1. March 2005 plan and budget…

72 hours: Inside San Diego County’s mental health crisis – a series by San Diego Union Tribune

The San Diego Union Tribune (SDUT) spent over one year with dozens of journalists working to create this report on San Diego County’s emergency response system as it relates to people in behavioral health crisis. Here is an index of links to all of the individual parts of this series. 72 Hours: Inside San Diego County’s mental health crisis –…

Board Retreat Public Comment (Extended)

This is my public comment to the BHAB Board Retreat participants in full. A summarized version was presented in order to meet the 3-minute limit. Hello Chair Stewart, Chair Fletcher, BHAB Members, Dr. Bergmann, and Staff This is an important day for you all to set the tone for the next 14 months of how and what BHAB will focus…

My Public Comment (extended version)

I gave a summary of the longer public comment below urging the Executive Board to: My longer comment is as follows. Thank you Executive Board Members, Dr. Bergmann, Staff and any other guests For nearly a decade you have heard me either on the Alcohol and Other Drug Advisory Board and the Behavioral Health Advisory Board, implore these boards to…

The illusion of stakeholder engagement. Who are we really serving, the SMI and behavioral health community or those with control over about $900m annually?

Three weeks ago, I wrote an email shown below to the person that we were told, in BHAB sub-committee and other meetings, would oversee the new community engagement work of the Behavioral Health Services (BHS) department. Three weeks later I still haven’t received a reply. I assume that 0.01% of the reasoning behind this lack of response originates from this…

$173 million-plus, sitting idle… while jail deaths, homeless deaths, overdose deaths soar. What gives?

The San Diego County Behavioral Health Services (BHS) can’t seem to help itself. When the state-mandated oversight body, the Behavioral Health Advisory Board, empowered by law to ensure abuses like this don’t get out of hand, is muzzled by the BHS, things… well… get out of hand. In this case, the current year’s MHSA Annual ‘Plan’ Update, the BHS is…

An Open Letter to BHS Director Dr. Bergmann regarding this year’s MHSA Annual Update

UPDATE: A September 22nd version of the plan including active hyperlinks was updated on the county website sometime thereafter, almost a full week after I notified the BHS, and is available for your review. Hi Dr. Bergmann, It is beyond frustrating to learn that your office released the 2022-23 MHSA Annual Update without announcing it to the public, especially during…

Community MHSA Training – Don’t Miss!

It’s great to see the Behavioral Health Services (BHS) launching two get-to-know-the-MHSA training sessions over the next week. Do you feel engaged? I sat on the Behavioral Health Advisory Board (BHAB) for six years (and the Alcohol & Other Drug Advisory Board for several years prior) and even I and many of my peers didn’t feel engaged. It’s a problem.…

Public Comment – Getting our act together

August 5, 2021 Public Comment submitted by Jerry Hall, former BHAB Member (read by staff into record). Good afternoon Board Chair Judith, Board Chair Fletcher, Members, Staff and Guests. On July 21st I emailed a proposal to several stakeholders in the hope that it would spur the BHAB and BHS to collaborate on creating an updated process for key BHAB…

Our Broken Mental Health System – if only BHAB could do it’s job.

We see it in the headlines day after day. At issue is that San Diegans have a powerful but, unrealized, opportunity to have a seat at the table as the County decides which people facing mental illness challenges, which communities are served with what resources and when, as well as an appropriate level of funding. In each of these examples…

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