Tracy Sinclair Feather's life was spinning out of control again, and the midtown woman was suicidal.

In the past, family members said, she would have admitted herself to the Sacramento County mental hospital, where she frequently got care. But the facility's crisis center had closed because of budget cuts, so Feather called police and reported that she wanted to hurt herself.

By the end of that day in early May, she was in the Sacramento County jail, facing charges of assaulting a peace officer and possible prison time.

The system that had rescued Feather time and again had broken down, family members said, and she was behind bars in lieu of $750,000 bail. Two months later, she remains in jail, awaiting a court date.

It is a scenario that psychiatric specialists and police predict will become more commonplace as the effects of wrenching budget cuts in county mental health services over the last year take hold. Already, police and hospitals are reporting increases in encounters with mentally ill people.

"More of these people are on the street now without treatment and medications, and we are continuously encountering them," said Sacramento police spokesman Officer Konrad Von Schoech. "If they are reacting violently toward other people or police, we have no choice" but to arrest them, he said.

Those arrests are squeezing the county jail, which has seen a "significant increase" in the number of inmates with mental problems since the service cuts began taking place last year, said Sacramento County sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Tim Curran. "It definitely is impacting our ability to house everyone while promoting the safety of both the staff and the mentally ill inmates," Curran said.

Feather, 48, is a petite, fragile woman who has suffered from bipolar disorder and other mental illness since she was a teenager. She is one of thousands of people with serious mental illnesses who have been affected by sweeping changes in Sacramento County's mental health system. In the face of massive budget deficits, the county has slashed services in virtually all departments and divisions.

The county closed the crisis center at its Mental Health Treatment hospital on Stockton Boulevard, where family members and police take the county's sickest psychiatric patients when they are deemed a danger to themselves or others. The county also shut down half the mental hospital's 100 inpatient beds.

On the outpatient side, thousands of mentally ill people were forced out of community treatment programs funded by the county. They received referrals to new programs, but many are having trouble navigating a new system of care, mental health providers said.

"Our consumers consider us family," said Alexan Bolte, program director for one of the community programs, El Hogar. "When their services were cut, the rug was pulled out from under them."

A downward spiral

The Sacramento area has a handful of programs that offer crisis counseling, Bolte and others said, but the programs typically are overloaded or require private insurance coverage or a referral from another facility. Inpatient programs also are overbooked, leaving patients in crisis lingering in hospital emergency rooms. The county opened a small facility in Carmichael after it cut inpatient beds at the mental hospital, but that center has been consistently full.

Feather, who lives with her husband in the guest house of her mother's Victorian home, said she felt lost after she was cut off from her community mental health program, where she got counseling, medications and other support. She went to a private psychiatrist, but was unhappy with the care and felt isolated, she said. By that time the crisis center had closed, so when she was feeling out of control "I didn't know what to do," Feather said in a jailhouse interview.

Doreen Sinclair, Feather's mother, said her daughter has been placed in public and private hospitals and halfway houses many times because of her mental problems but had been relatively stable in recent years. She took care of her husband, Ben Feather, a retired psychiatrist who is more than 25 years her senior and suffers from dementia, Sinclair said. She cooked meals, kept house and managed her medications. An animal lover, she adopted stray cats and nursed them to health, her mother said.

"She is a very kind person. Very loving," Sinclair said. "She has never demonstrated any violence that I am aware of."

Feather has no criminal record in Sacramento County during the past 10 years. But she began to spiral downward in the months after her county services fell away, she and her mother said. In previous years, Feather said, she would go to the crisis center when she felt depressed or panicked or "heard voices" inside her head. Lately, "I was calling the police in the middle of the night, because I didn't know who else to call," she said.

Charged with assault

Feather felt desperate on that May day when her life imploded, she said. She was overwhelmed by her husband's health problems, was not getting the proper medications for herself and was thinking about ending it all. Early that evening, while her mother was away, she called the police.

Officers arrived quickly and defused the situation, said Von Schoech, but Feather called again later in the day. A second set of officers responded, he said, and this time Feather emerged from her home with a "hunting style" knife in her hand.

Feather told The Bee she wanted to kill herself. She said she threw the knife to the ground when ordered to do so. But officers viewed the situation differently, said Von Schoech. He said that when police told Feather to drop the knife, she "cocked her arm back" as though she wanted to slash the officer. Feeling threatened, police used a Taser to subdue her, he said. She was booked into jail that night.

Feather frequently dissolved into tears during a lengthy discussion with a reporter last week. She has been charged with assault on a peace officer in the line of duty, a felony that could carry a state prison sentence of up to five years, said county district attorney spokeswoman Shelly Orio. Orio said the prosecution has offered to allow Feather to be sentenced to time in a residential treatment program instead of prison.

Feather's attorney, Dennise Henderson, said she will ask that her client, who has pleaded not guilty, be released to her home and get court-ordered treatment.

"She is very shaky, very emotional, suicidal," Henderson said. "The jail is certainly not set up to care for people like her."

Feather is next scheduled to be in court Thursday.

"I just want to go home," she said, tears running down her cheeks. "I want to hug my husband and my mother and my cats. But that might not happen for a long time."

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