Our Neighbors On The Streets: A Social Justice Perspective

  Range of Factors Making Mental Health Crisis Worse for Santa Barbara’s Homeless Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. (appeared in Noozhawk November 13, 2023) A major mental health crisis is severely impacting the unhoused people living in cities across the United Sates, declared the US Conference of Mayors at their annual meeting last June. In July a bipartisan delegation from the Conference met with senior congressional leaders of both parties calling the mental health crisis “America’s number 1 problem” and articulated the need for federal legislation. Despite the many recent improvements to our County’s Behavioral Wellness system, the mental health crisis is evident in Santa Barbara. How did we get here?  Two public health emergencies—the COVID pandemic and the opioid overdose epidemic—have collided with two negative social trends — California’s housing and mental health care crises—to greatly impact a marginalized population that wasn’t doing that well psychologically even in t...