SAN JOSE, CA—“It tears my heart out the way my mentally ill adult son is treated by this system. I fear for his life,” says Anna Griffin in Silicon Valley, CA. “When he’s in jail, as he has been for the last two years, he doesn’t get treatment. When he is released, it’s worse as I can’t find him. I’m terrified he’ll be killed in the streets.”
One judge in San Jose CA attempts to address these cases, but the bottom line virtually always is, “There’s no bed for him”—meaning no available treatment.
There used to be beds for mental patients in San Jose at Agnews Center. Opened in 1888 and authorized by the state legislature, it initially took all types of patients but later only developmentally disabled persons. Around 1950, Agnews had some 5,000 residents and staff.
That was at the height of America’s industrial production, and in the post World War II period, workers received some share of the prosperity. But by the new millennium, computerized robotic production eliminated many jobs forever. The new competitor was the robot that drives wages—and the value of human life—towards zero. Not only wages, but social benefits such as appropriate care for the mentally ill now are taken away. Capitalism will not provide for any worker whose labor is no longer needed.
In spite of the crying need, the 2003-04 Governor’s Budget directed that Agnews should be closed which it was in 2011.
In 1997 a big chunk of the campus was sold by the state to Sun Microsystems. The remaining land, which is solid gold at the north of Silicon Valley, is now up for sale to the highest corporate bidder.
The mentally ill won’t be making a higher bid. Of course, housing the mentally ill in jails is expensive madness, but where corporate profits are at issue, there’s no contest. The mentally ill are constantly ensnared in the criminal court system. Charisse Domingo of Silicon Valley De-Bug’s AC Justice Project, estimates that perhaps a third of the cases the group assists weekly relate to the mentally ill caught up in the criminal court system.
Across the US, people are struggling to get treatment for their mentally disabled relatives. Mary Neal, whose brother died in 2003 in police custody, founded Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill (“AIMI”), advocating for 1.25 million inmates who are wrongly and cruelly imprisoned rather than treated for their mental dysfunctions. These struggles are part of the life-and-death fights for justice, for national health care, and for a new society based on human need where everyone has justice and health care, including mental health care.
The goal is that no family member would again cry out, as Mary Neal did in poetry: “I wish you were a dog, my brother, in my heart I cried. Then more people would care about you and wonder why you died.”
