I am shocked, outraged and deeply saddened by “patient dumping” which is a process of dropping off the mentally ill from a hospital to a homeless shelter without proper warning or guidance.
As mental health clinics are closing more and more due to budget cuts, the mentally ill are left out in the cold. They are not getting the help they need and are being tossed aside like trash.

It was reported on KCRA.com how a woman with a mental capacity of a three year old from Yolo County was dropped off by a taxi in the middle of the night at Loaves and Fishes in Sacramento County. She was not found until the next day because the facility was closed overnight.

Who sends a mentally ill patient out the door with a taxi or bus voucher not knowing the exact destination? Who drops off a person in need of assistance to a facility that is closed? And leaves her outside in the dark to fend for herself?

Kevin McCarty who is running for State Assembly 2010 believes that patient dumping is “morally wrong and bad public policy.” He is proposing a bill which will fight against patient dumping and allow for a hand to hand transfer of the patient to the shelter or final destination. Councilman McCarty hopes this bill will pass early next year.

I know patient dumping exists because onetime I was let out of a psychiatric hospital (not fully well I might add) with a bus voucher not sure how to ride the bus and not sure how to get home. I did not even know which side of the street to stand on.

In the Los Angeles times it claimed how some of the hospitals are still dumping mental patients off at night on Skid Row; some are still in there hospital gowns.

As a side note, it was also reported how these two little puppies were rescued from a burning mobile home. Do you think these firefighters let these puppies go in the dark and in the middle of the street to fend for themselves? I think not.

I guess the mentally ill are not as cute as puppies.

Although, we do vote.