Texas needs to reform its mental health hospitals
Imagine this common, tragic scenario: Your previously healthy son, daughter or spouse has gradually developed increasing difficulty managing her finances, job or relationship. A doctor sees your loved one and diagnoses depression or another mental illness. The doctor learns that she is at risk of hurting herself or others. Or maybe she committed a minor crime such as trespassing, and the police arrested her. At the police station she is diagnosed as having a mental illness.
In both cases, your loved one will likely be sent to a state mental health hospital that is poorly designed for healing. Whole wards may be closed due to mold. She may share a small room with up to five other patients. The building where she's sleeping was built almost 100 years ago and is run down and out of date. The campus, which housed about 3,000 people when it was first built, now houses 300, but those unused wards were never torn down. Instead they just rot and gradually fall down. If she's at Rusk State Hospital, the ceiling in her room may have accessible pipes or other code violations, which means that the state is mandated to employ staff to sit in the room, 24 hours a day, to prevent patients from harming themselves.
Taxpayer money is wasted because of the poor design of the facility and the length of stays, and staff and patients are more likely to be physically injured because of the crowded conditions.
Hundreds of times a day across Texas, people go into crisis and are placed in a state mental health hospital system that is itself in crisis. A 2015 report by the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) found that five of the 11 hospitals in the system were in such bad shape that repair wasn't a realistic option. They have to be replaced.
Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/03/17/texas-needs-reform-mental-health-hospitals
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