Mental Health

LA County Swears in a New, Reform-Minded Mental Health Director…& an Update on the Selection of a New Probation Chief



LA COUNTY HAS A NEW HEAD OF MENTAL HEALTH

Last week, the Los Angeles County board of Supervisors formally hired a new Director of LA’s Department of Mental Health, the largest public mental health system in the nation.

The new director’s name is Dr. Jonathan Sherin. And, according to our sources, in Sherin the supes seem to have found a winner.

By training, Dr. Sherin is a psychologist and neurobiologist with a particular expertise in developing programs and providing care for individuals who are, as he explains it, challenged with persistent and severe mental health conditions, “many of whom have criminal records due to disorganized thought processes and behavior.”

Professionally, Sherin worked for a decade for the Department of Veteran Affairs, both in Los Angeles and Miami, where he gained a national reputation in the arena of care for veterans struggling with reintegration challenges, testifying frequently before Congress on the issues of veteran suicide, homelessness, and other mental health-related difficulties with which many vets struggle after they come home.

Most recently, Sherin has continued his work with veterans and mental health as the chief medical officer, and executive vice president for military communities, for the national nonprofit social-services group Volunteers of America.


EXPERIENCED REFORMER

During his time in Los Angeles, Sherin has been unafraid to wade into some of the county’s most pressing mental health controversies with an eye toward reform. For example, he has been a strong, outspoken proponent of diversion programs for mentally ill criminal offenders who revolve in an out of the LA County’s jail system.

“From a clinical perspective,” he wrote in a letter to the board of supervisors on the topic in 2014, “it is important to recognize that incarceration is in many cases contraindicated.”

Around that same time, Sherin told the Wall Street Journal that jail-based treatment programs aren’t the right solution.

“They’re a reaction that is based in fear,” he said. “Having an individual with mental illness in a constrained environment, in a punitive environment, in a deprived environment, is adding fuel to potential fire.”

Similarly, Sherin has made it clear that he is not a fan of excessive prescribing of psychotropics and other medications for either adults or kids.

He expressed his concerns to LA Magazine reporter Anne Taylor Fleming about the overuse of psychiatric medication for veterans. “Our society—the VA and beyond—is focused on treating mental and physical injuries with pharmaceuticals,” Sherin said. “Opioids can be effective in the short term, but they are not a solution. We have an epidemic of younger folks who are becoming addicted to them.”

Given the revelations that have risen in the last few years about the overuse of psychiatric drugs with California children in the state’s foster care systems, and possibly in juvenile facilities and elsewhere, it is heartening to find that LA’s County’s new head mental health guy appears, when it comes to drug use, to believe firmly in restraint.

Sherin replaces Acting Director Robin Kay, who took over after the exit of longtime former Director of Mental Health, Dr. Marvin Southard, who headed the department for 17 years. Southard announced his retirement in August 2015, shortly after the Supes voted to consolidate the county’s three health agencies.

Dr. Sherin’s undergraduate degree is from Brown University, his medical degree was a combined program at the University of Chicago and Harvard Medical School, where he was a scholar in residence, followed by an internship and residency at UCLA. He continues to teach and provide psychiatric care as a volunteer at the VA in Los Angeles, Calif.

Dr. Sherin will be sworn in on Friday at noon at the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration.


AND ABOUT THE MUCH-AWAITED NEW PROBATION CHIEF

While we’re on the topic of heads of big LA County agencies, we understand that the board of supervisors has finally chosen a chief for the county’s embattled Department of Probation, but that there are still a few contractual matters being ironed out before they will actually announce their choice. The vote to select the final candidate was reportedly unanimous.

While we await a formal announcement, here is WitnessLA’s previously published look at the five finalists, a varied list of candidates, each with different strengths, whom the board has been interviewing and, in some cases, re-interviewing in the course of making their final selection for the crucial position.

The county has cycled through five probation chiefs in just over 10 years, as the department struggled through various serious scandals and challenges in the past decade. Now more recent revelations (see here, here, here and here for examples) have pointed to the fact that the agency’s problems are still far from solved, making the selection of the chief, plus the process of instituting a system of civilian oversight for the agency, of ever more pressing importance.

9 Comments

  • Does anyone else find it rather amusing that each time the BOS hires a new Director or Chief of whatever, they are called “reformers” or “someone who will turn things around?” Why then was it not turned around or reformed?…

  • Doctor Sherin, welcome to your knew position and good luck in manning the helm of DMH. Word of advice, don’t make the same mistakes some of the recent newly appointed County executives have made. Don’t drink the “Cool-Aide” and buy into all of the recommendations made by your existing executive team. Talk to your middle managers and front-line supervisors at the least, to get a real-world perspective of the “lay of the land.” If you feel yourself being guided, directed or heavily pushed in one direction by someone, it’s probably a good idea to either push back the other way or maintain the status quo. You will have many followers and sycophants lobbying for themselves and jockying for your favor. Hopefully you have a good neutral advisor that can help you wade through the muck. Also, get mental health out of the hands of LASD or put more people in place who are ready to pull their sleeves up, get dirty and work together. End the pattern of people pointing fingers and deflecting their attention away from their ineptitude.

    Best of luck and hope you don’t represent yet another “LA County Superstar” that starts off with a bang but flames out and fizzles in short order.

  • Dr. Sherwin, “Conspiracy” speaks the truth. If Sheriff McDonnell had taken the same advice you were offered in posting #2, he, McD, would be on the road to success. But McD did JUST THE OPPOSITE. He kept the entire Tanaka EPC, listened to everything they told him, promoted all the Tanaka coin holders they could muster and is rolling full throttle with Tanaka’s agenda. McD spoke to NO line managers at all, dug up his current XO out of a graveyard and he drinks Tanaka flavored Kool Aid by the gallons and swears it is magic elixir made by Dr. Lee Baca, that gives him superior powers and intelligence about an organization he knows nothing about. But hey, we have brass snaps, don’t we?

  • Calling it a spade: unfortunately most of what you say is correct about our Sheriff. The fact is though; most of the people he has promoted were not Tanaka people. They were managers who were simply afraid to stand up to Tanaka, Baca, or any other superior. Leaders are worried more for their people than with their own rise, this characteristic is lacking within most at the Round Table!!

  • I agree with commenter number 2 as it relates to the new probation chief, who rumor has it will be Terri McDonald. The new probation chief will need to be cautious of her executive team and their personal agendas and vendettas. She should listen, but pay close attention to her middle managers. She would be well advised to remove those who are appointed at the discretion of the chief and recruit her own team. Most of those at the top layer of the probation department speak in forked tongue despite promoting themselves as ethical, above reproach and “get this”….guided by a higher power. I wish her the best of luck but that luck will need to be tempered with a probation chief who will not simply be a puppet to the Board or those internal executives who will enthusiastically lead her to towards a path that result in her almost certain demise as the chief,.

  • The LA County drank the “Kool-Aide” it would seem. Potty…I guess either someone is the greatest pitch-person since PT Barnum, they don’t care about the tangible substance of change but rather the facade or “blind, deaf and dumb”. The “Northern” intelligencia have all the answers I guess and CDCR and LASD are model, smooth running machines that have been “reinformed”, “fixed” and made whole. Sad…sad state of affairs for LA County , the tax payers and the employees who have to suffer under these “leaders”.

  • The new translation of “reform minded:” Staunch defender of the status quo, guaranteed to not reform anything except in the eyes of the establishment and their media lackeys.

  • Mental Health reform was on the ballot. They were given monies to build new facilities, as well as supervised and partially supervised group housing so that the mentally ill would receive their medication and not be locked up (unless deemed dangerous or as a first step to being outside). They were to learn to take care of themselves, have access to job training, and eventually have their own housing. What happened to the money, because none of these things are happening. Just go on any street in downtown or elsewhere to see the mess that ignoring the problem has become. Changes are needed asap and L A County needs to team up with private sources to get these people the help they need.

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