Sheriffs angry about lack of hospital beds. (WDBJ)
(4-2-21) An influential Virginia Sheriff lashed out at the state’s behavioral health department and the General Assembly during a press conference this week stating that both needed to “stop passing the buck and step up to develop and implement solutions to address the constant bed shortages and other deficiencies in the state response to mental health crises.”
Flanked by other sheriffs and police chiefs, Montgomery County Sheriff Hank Partin warned: “Folks that are in crisis, that need help – they aren’t receiving help.”
It is not uncommon, the sheriff said, for his officers to spend hours driving across the state searching for an available state hospital bed only to arrive and be told that none is available.
The officers’ complaints about a lack of state hospital beds for Virginians, who are being held under Temporary Detention Orders (TDOs), is hardly new.
A decade ago, then Inspector General G. Douglas Bevelacqua warned that there were not enough crisis care beds available at state psychiatric hospitals or at local hospitals. During a 90-day period, he discovered emergency rooms had turned away 200 individuals who had met involuntary commitment criteria and were judged dangerous. He called it “streeting” – simply kicking ill individuals to the streets.
In November 2013, state Sen. Creigh Deeds took his son, Gus, to a mental health facility but was told no local hospital bed could be found within the necessary time period for a TDO. Deeds and his son were sent home where Gus attacked his father with a knife, slashing his face, before ending his own life.
In 2015, Jamycheal Mitchell, age 24, died from “wasting away” syndrome in a Hampton Roads Regional jail after waiting 101 days for a state hospital bed. He suffered a heart attack after literally starving to death.
Virginia is not the only state that doesn’t have enough crisis care beds. Back in a 2005 study, the Treatment Advocacy Center warned:
“The consequences of the severe shortage of public psychiatric beds include increased homelessness; the incarceration of mentally ill individuals in jails and prisons; emergency rooms being overrun with patients waiting for a psychiatric bed; and an increase in violent behavior, including homicides, in communities across the nation.”
Fifteen experts cited in that report recommended states have “50 (range 40 to 60) public psychiatric beds per 100,000 population for hospitalization for individuals with serious psychiatric disorders.” At that time, Virginia had less than half that recommended number – 22.5 beds.
