By Phillip Reese - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, June 20, 2007

After years of sparse funding, poor coordination among mental health agencies and a couple of failed bills, suicide prevention efforts are suddenly the focus of much attention in the Capitol.

A Senate committee will discuss a bill today that would create a California Office of Suicide Prevention. A state-sanctioned advisory group is meeting this summer to come up with a statewide suicide prevention plan. And a state commission recently approved a $60 million, four-year effort to expand suicide- and violence-prevention programs at California's schools and colleges.

The new focus is due to a flood of cash from the Mental Health Services Act and a years-long push by suicide prevention advocates, nudged forward by public concern over the shootings at Virginia Tech.

Suicide "is a preventable death," said Stephen Mayberg, director of the California Department of Mental Health. "Prevention has never really had an opportunity to flourish. This is a wonderful opportunity."

A Bee story last month showed that the number of suicides among youths under 25 in Sacramento County had increased more than 60 percent since the start of the decade and local experts decried the lack of coordinated prevention.

That concern has long been a mantra of mental health advocates, who helped pass a bill last year calling for a statewide suicide prevention plan. The governor vetoed that bill, saying a mandate was unnecessary, but instructed the state's Department of Mental Health to come up with a plan by the middle of next year.

Funding from the Mental Health Services Act has added heft to all the talk as well. About $200 million soon will be available to counties that come up with mental health prevention and intervention plans.

In addition, the Department of Mental Health will receive $14 million a year for four years to identify ways of preventing suicide and coordinating prevention efforts among agencies.

"We've been advocating for this process for 10 years, so we're very happy we are here," Mark Chaffee, president of the Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network -- California, said last week, just before one of the recent major meetings on the topic.

At that meeting, a wide range of topics arose, from ensuring that researchers have access to the right data on suicide to addressing a shortage of suicide prevention training.

"I went to school and learned a little about suicide," John Buck, chief executive officer of Turning Point, a Sacramento mental health nonprofit, said during a break. "I had to prepare myself more on my own."

The panel, called the California Suicide Prevention Plan Advisory Committee, will make its recommendations later this year. Its members want to get their work done in time to have an impact on what counties interested in the mental health act money are coming up with on their own.

"Counties are already starting to plan," said Emily Nahat, chief of the Prevention and Early Intervention Branch of the mental health department. "The sooner we get this out to the counties, the more likely they are to use it."

A member of the prevention plan advisory committee, Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi, D-Castro Valley, also is pushing to create an Office of Suicide Prevention within the Department of Mental Health.

The office would coordinate efforts across California, collect data, report to the Legislature on prevention and identify what works and what doesn't.

"We need some authority figure in the department to say this is a best practice," Hayashi said.

Hayashi's bill passed the Assembly recently with little opposition. It goes before the Senate's Health Committee today.

Chaffee, the California SPAN president, believes Hayashi's proposed law is unnecessary, with its goals either achieved or already being discussed by the group coming up with the prevention plan. The Department of Mental Health has not taken a position on the bill.

But John Bateson, executive director of the Contra Costa Crisis Center, is among those supporting it.

Somebody needs to rope disparate groups together, Bateson said, because agencies across the state doing their own thing had led to mixed results.

"Somebody has to take the lead on this," he said. "To date, no one has."

Adversity prompted some leadership recently in the form of a four-year, $60 million initiative approved last week by the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission. The initiative to expand suicide- and violence-prevention efforts at California schools came in response to the Virginia Tech shootings.

"It shouldn't take a tragedy like Virginia Tech to compel action, but there can be a silver lining out of such a horrible tragedy," said Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, author of the Mental Health Services Act.

All this activity leaves Rusty Selix optimistic about the future of suicide prevention. Selix is executive director and legislative advocate of the Mental Health Association in California and the California Council of Community Mental Health Agencies.

Not only is California pouring unprecedented sums into suicide prevention at the local and state levels, but that money is complemented by other funding under the Mental Health Services Act.

"Whether something is called suicide prevention or not," Selix said, "it's a goal with everything we are going to do."