This is what a new Long Beach report says about expanding mental health access

May 8—A mental health crisis continues compounding the larger homeless crisis in Long Beach, according to a new report — and city officials want to figure out how to solve both.

While that may be unsurprising, potential solutions were at the heart of a long-awaited, 87-page report the City Council recently received. That report discusses potential strategies to expand local mental health services in Long Beach, an effort officials say is much needed to help reduce the population of unhoused folks in the city — and one that will likely take multiple approaches in both the short- and long-term.

The report, compiled with feedback from the city's Mental Health Advisory Group, outlined key issues and proposed strategies and action steps for enhancing the mental health system in Long Beach. While the health department has already implemented some solutions, such as creating a mental health resource guide, there are others that the city could still take on, everything from increasing treatment capacity to focusing on specific populations.

The City Council initially asked the health department and city staff to study the feasibility of expanding Long Beach's local mental health offerings in November 2021. The council received the final report last week.

Mental health concerns in Long Beach's general population — largely spurred by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic — have been on the rise, especially among youth and Black residents, according to the report.

"We focused on increasing access to mental health services across the city, increasing direct funding into the city for mental health services," said Kelly Colopy, director of the Health and Human Services Department, "particularly for mental health crisis response coordination across programs and residential supports."

About 35% of people surveyed during Long Beach's 2023 point-in-time homeless count reported having a serious mental illness this year, according to results released late last month; about 32% reported having a substance-use disorder.

"With the data that we just saw in the homeless count," Mayor Rex Richardson said during the recent council meeting, "it shows that it's right on time for us to be able to have the conversation about what we actually can do around localizing mental health infrastructure in our communities."

The four areas for improvement the report focuses on include mental health treatment capacity, prevention, access to treatment and focus populations. Each area has goals with short- and long-term strategies the city can begin working on within the next few years.

In the area of mental health treatment capacity, for example, the report recommended the city support further development of the workforce pipeline by helping train community mental health providers as preceptors, or teachers, and find ways to increase funding for mental health resources, such as helping connect existing service providers with state and county grant opportunities.

The report also noted that a number of diverse populations within the city are disproportionately impacted by mental health and substance-use disorders — yet face additional barriers to services. To help solve that, the report suggested the city focus on transition-aged youth — those 16-to-24 years old — and people experiencing homelessness.

The city's recent proclamation of a homelessness emergency created further urgency to allocate resources to expand access to mental health services for people who are homeless, as well as support for transition-aged youth to help them succeed and prevent them from becoming homeless.

Some of the longer term steps the city has to make to increase access to mental health services for people who are homeless, according to the report, include working with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health to create additional full-service partnership slots, increase supportive housing units that provide ongoing rental assistance and boost the capacity of existing board-and-care facilities to increase housing retention.

The City Council did not take any specific action on the report during its Tuesday, May 2, meeting. But the panel did discuss the report and asked questions to staff.

Councilmember Suely Saro, for example, recommended the city look for resources outside of DMH to provide resources — and improving outreach.

Richardson, for his part, said local coordination on mental health services would help make these services more accessible to residents.

Councilmember Mary Zendejas, meanwhile, said she's pleased the city is focusing on mental health.

"I'm confident that Long Beach is moving in the right direction when it comes to removing barriers and stigma and addressing mental health with the care and resources that it demands," she said. "I'm happy to see prevention has been identified as a focus area."

But officials also acknowledged that there was still a lot of work to be done.

"My takeaway from this presentation was that there is a lot that we can do from the standpoint of coordination and convening," Richardson said, "bringing people together to identify additional funding, being able to help direct funding locally and navigation."

The health department, he added, should continue briefing the council as officials and the new Mental Health Advisory Group continue their work.

The next step for the health department and the advisory group is to begin applying the short- and long-term strategies, with a focus on coordinating and identifying funding strategies, as well as updating the mental health resource guide at least every six months.

"This isn't a short-term conversation," Richardson said. "There's more that we have to do but there are some real opportunities that I see here that I'll continue to support."

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