Opinion: Mental Health Must Be Part of Health Policy Plans

In a San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece, Eduardo Vega -- executive director of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco and commissioner on the state Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission -- writes that Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) plan to restructure oversight of state mental health hospitals "may make sense, but wholesale dismemberment of the Department of Mental Health threatens to throw us back to an era of institutionalizing the mentally ill." Vega adds that "a discussion of health care policy and social welfare is incomplete without thinking of the community's mental health needs."

• "Health Care Reform Must Include Mental Wellness" (Vega, San Francisco Chronicle, 6/13).