![]() Space in short-term crisis units is also squeezed. In Georgia, roughly 100 beds in the state's five psychiatric hospitals - or about 10% - are empty because there's no one to take care of the patients who would occupy them. States are now focused on suicide prevention and crisis services to reduce pressure on emergency rooms and inpatient services, Hepburn added. The workforce shortage is especially acute at inpatient or residential behavioral health facilities, he said, and that pressure extends to private providers. Brian Hepburn, head of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. Like the medical system overall, the behavioral health system is "under a great deal of strain," said Dr. But in many cases, those beds are now filled, too. The well-insured normally can choose private facilities or general hospital psychiatric wards, Trestman said. In Maine, a committee of criminal justice and mental health officials has been working on adding state psychiatric beds and finding placements for people who need treatment for mental illness but are being held in jails. Last month, National Guard soldiers returned to Oregon's largest public psychiatric facility to shore up the workforce there. The strain is spilling over into the private system, she added.Ī Texas advisory committee reported in July that a near-record number of people were on the waitlist for state hospital beds for forensic patients, meaning those involved in the court system who have mental illness. "I have never seen an entire system bottleneck this bad," said Kathy Harkey, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness' Virginia chapter. Virginia has severely curtailed admissions to state mental hospitals because of staffing shortages amid increased demand for services. "The current crisis is unprecedented in the extent, severity and sweep of its national impact." Robert Trestman, chairperson of the American Psychiatric Association's Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing. "ERs have been flooded with patients needing psychiatric care," said Dr. Nationally, the shortage of beds and mental health workers has collided with an increasing, pandemic-driven demand for mental health treatment. ![]() "Such patients are sometimes strapped down or held in isolation, and often receive little or no mental health services," said Roland Behm, a board member of the Georgia chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The departures have limited the capacity of state-run psychiatric units for patients, who often are poor or uninsured, forcing some people with serious mental illness to languish in hospital emergency rooms or jails until beds open up in the state systems, according to local leaders of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Many state workers, such as nurses, are leaving those psychiatric units for much higher pay - with temp agencies or other employers - and less stressful conditions. The bed capacity problem, which has existed for years, has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, creating backlogs of poor or uninsured patients as well as people in jails who are awaiting placement in state facilities. The shortage of beds in Georgia's state psychiatric facilities reflects a national trend linked to staffing deficits that are cramping services in the public mental health system. "Two weeks ago, we were probably holding eight to 10 patients. John Sy, an emergency medicine physician in Savannah. Many patients dealing with mental health crises are having to wait several days in an ER until a bed becomes available at one of Georgia's five state psychiatric hospitals, as public facilities nationwide feel the pinch of the pandemic. This article originally appeared on Kaiser Health News.
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