Camarillo State Hospital

A swarm of state officials shut down four juvenile care homes and slapped the owner with allegations of failing to properly care for the homes' troubled youths, including a 15-year-old boy who recently drowned and a teen girl who they said was sexually assaulted (Aug. 31). The suspension of Amberwood Inc. is a strong argument for the retention of Camarillo State Hospital. The 800 patients at Camarillo State Hospital may possibly face a similar Amberwood crisis once they are discharged from the hospital and sent to group homes.

The state is moving toward shutting down the last children's ward in the California mental hospital system, a unit at Metropolitan State Hospital seen by critics as a throwback to an old, broken paradigm of care that favored institutions over individualized treatment. The ward has been the subject of contentious scrutiny from the start, and its potential closure has sparked vigorous debate though only a small number of patients are affected.

Most state hospitals, including Camarillo, have long been unsuited to serve as location shots for the 1948 film "The Snake Pit." Yet the articles by James Quinn on March 9 about Camarillo and the mental health system are naive at best. The fact that state mental hospitals now house a fraction of their peak capacity speaks of more than the miracles of modern drugs. Unfortunately, it speaks of a system in tremendous chaos, underfunded, understaffed and burnt out by the stranglehold of its own bureaucracy.

Investigators from the Justice Department visited Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk last week to check out allegations that staff at the institution for the mentally ill had excessively restrained and medicated patients. Whether federal charges result or not, the investigation illuminates a deeper problem: a steady decline in funding for inpatient care of the seriously mentally ill.

Forty employees of Camarillo State Hospital will lose their jobs Jan. 1 in a cost-cutting move that officials hope will save $3 million over the next six months. The 40 employees of the hospital--ranging from psychiatrists to plumbers--received their layoff notices late last week, according to Lanette Castleman, a spokeswoman for the institution. "Because we are receiving fewer patients, we no longer needed the same size staff," Castleman said. "Still, any cuts like this are difficult.

A team of investigators from the state auditor general's office is combing through records and talking to patients this week at Camarillo State Hospital to determine if mentally retarded children there have abused each other, as they reportedly did at a state hospital in Sonoma. Hospital officials say the probe is part of a statewide investigation and are confident that Camarillo has no similar problems.

Parents battling to spare Camarillo State Hospital from closure won a partial victory Wednesday when a Superior Court judge ordered the institution to stay open until state officials can ensure that a handful of remaining patients will not be harmed when the facility shuts down.

Supervisor John K. Flynn will be there. So will Brian Bowley, president of the local psychiatric technicians union. Except for a scheduling conflict, Camarillo Councilman Mike Morgan said, he would be there too. The occasion today in Sacramento will be a hearing by the state Assembly's budget subcommittee, a panel of legislators charged with weighing plans for the future of Camarillo State Hospital.

A $32-million contract has been awarded to build an energy-saving co-generation plant at Camarillo State Hospital, which contractors say will save the equivalent of 117,000 barrels of oil a year. Receiving the contract was Impell Corp., a Walnut Creek-based subsidiary of Combustion Engineering of Stamford, Conn. The contract was awarded by O. L. S. Energy of Camarillo, which is overseeing the project for the state.

As psychiatrists escorted Chris Olsen into Camarillo State Hospital two years ago he saw overhead wires dripping sewage and heard voices telling him he was the Antichrist. Schizophrenia had struck Olsen in his late teens, scrambling his reason and polluting his mind with hallucinations. Doctors and drugs had failed. Then he was committed to Camarillo State Hospital, home to one of the nation's top schizophrenia research facilities and workplace of world-renowned psychiatrist Robert Liberman.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating possible civil rights abuses at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, a sprawling facility that for years has been the subject of complaints about excessive use of restraints and drugs to control child and adult mental patients. Federal investigators arrived last week at Metropolitan, which houses disturbed felons from state prison and is the last state hospital to treat mentally ill children.

Plans for the Cal State Channel Islands library and media center were unveiled Tuesday night, showcasing a melding of old and new, steel and glass that planners hope will become the centerpiece of the new university. The two-story, 260,000-square-foot complex, designed by world-renowned British architect Norman Foster, features a glass facade linked to the Spanish-style design of what was once Camarillo State Hospital.

With the holidays here, Marcia Flannery did her best to make the motel room feel like home for her son, Page Dye. She set up a tiny Christmas tree and surrounded it with toy harmonicas, chocolate Santas and a dancing snowman that wiggled to a yuletide version of the twist. She set out new slippers and a pair of her son's favorite pajamas. But here at this Costa Mesa motor inn, hours from her Oxnard home, Flannery knew Page would eventually ask the question that always breaks her heart.

Ventura County will get its first new freeway offramp in nearly two decades, one that traffic engineers say will help cut congestion at another interchange in this city as the new Cal State Channel Islands campus opens for business. Construction of the $7.7-million Springville interchange--roughly halfway between Central Avenue and Las Posas Road--is expected to begin in spring. It is being planned and paid for by Camarillo, as it prepares for growth along the city's western fringe.

We are stunned and disappointed by The Times' failure to endorse Supervisor Kathy Long's candidacy for reelection. You seem to view the mental health merger as the defining issue in the campaign, but anyone with a grasp of the county or the 3rd District knows that this is not a one-issue district or county. Long's advocacy for the mentally ill cannot be questioned. While Mike Morgan did everything in his power to shut down Camarillo State Hospital, Long fought to keep it open. The result of closing the hospital is a housing shortage that she and the Board of Supervisors are still working to resolve.

Professor Larry Decker took a minute out of his back-to-school routine Monday to welcome the first students to the first day of classes at Ventura County's emerging state university. For the past nine years, Decker has taught at the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge, a satellite learning center shoehorned into a coffee-colored office building overlooking the Ventura Freeway.

As the last 18 psychiatric patients entered vans Tuesday to be moved out of Camarillo State Hospital, their caretakers wept. This, finally, was it. Budget cutbacks and changes in psychiatric policy had brought an end to 61 years of pioneering research and patient care at Camarillo State. On this last day of treatment, whining wheelchair lifts helped pack up the seven men left in the skilled nursing unit for transfer to other facilities.

Come along with Joyce Kennedy and watch a dream unfold. Roaming through the building that serves as the cornerstone for Ventura County's first public university, she marvels at the classrooms and offices all set for the arrival today of the first students and teachers at the new campus. She pokes her head into the student lounge, then walks up to a rooftop terrace, where students will soon be eating and drinking coffee and cramming for tests.

Come along with Joyce Kennedy and watch a dream unfold. Roaming through the building that serves as the cornerstone for Ventura County's first public university, she marvels at the classrooms and offices all set for the arrival Monday of the first students and teachers at the new campus. She pokes her head into the student lounge, then walks up to a rooftop terrace, where students will soon be eating and drinking coffee and cramming for tests.