Listen here to About Health 5/27/24 KPFA.org—94.1FM https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=423094
Our mental health care system is broken, and has been for a long time. There aren’t enough psychiatric hospital beds, or psychiatrists, or therapists, or safe out patient facilities, or good follow up care, or housing, or retraining programs for people with mental illness who are leaving prison. Care often isn’t coordinated, and so many mentally ill people wind up on the streets or in prison. There are about 113,000 people in California at any time who are homeless, and about 25% of the homeless adults studied in Los Angeles County suffer from a severe mental illness.
Please be aware that severe mental illness and suicide will be mentioned during this show, so if that might be triggering for you, you may want to skip this episode. For anyone who is needing help, please know that you can call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. It’s available 24 hours a day, and it’s free and confidential support for people in distress–that’s 988.
Guest:
Alice Feller is a clinical psychiatrist with a subspecialty in the treatment of substance use disorder. Many of her patients suffer from severe mental illness, and often live on the streets or behind bars. She has worked in hospital emergency rooms, psychiatric wards, outpatient clinics, chemical dependency treatment programs and in private practice. Her approach includes psychotherapy tailored to the needs of the patient and medication where appropriate. She has taught classes on the treatment of substance use disorder and consulted to the California Medical Board on physicians impaired by chemical dependence. She served two terms on the Berkeley Homeless Commission. For the past two years she has been a member of FASMI (Family Advocates for Severe Mental Illness), an advocacy group campaigning for changes in the law and better mental health care. Her recently published book is “American Madness” Fighting for Patients in a broken mental health system. She lives in Berkeley with her husband and daughter.
