Mental health crisis is still at hand

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, July 1, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.

As the one-year anniversary of Clark County's mental health emergency draws near, the numbers of psychiatric patients clogging up emergency rooms have been climbing in the last week, and a major bill to help solve the problem becomes law today.

Those contrasting bits of news caused Jim Osti, a grant writer with the Clark County Health District and a member of the Southern Nevada Mental Health Coalition, to echo author Charles Dickens:"It's the best of times, it's the worst of times."

The number of mentally ill patients in Las Vegas Valley emergency rooms waiting for beds to open up at the state's psychiatric campus began climbing from a high of 45 in the last month to between 56 and 76 since June 23.

Last July, when there were more than 100 psychiatric patients in the emergency rooms, Clark County Manager Thom Reilly declared an emergency, setting in motion fast-track funding for 28 additional beds at the state campus.

Those additional beds have helped somewhat, but funding that the Legislature approved will go much further, going to setting up, this fall, a 50-bed crisis center at a location not yet chosen, and by next July, a 190-bed psychiatric hospital on the state's campus at 6161 Charleston Ave.

But meanwhile, those involved in the issue said, recent numbers are a bit worrisome.

"I am concerned that we're still on the verge of a crisis, since no additional facilities have been added (since last year) and no one can predict when the numbers are going to swing," said Rory Chetelat, emergency medical services manager with the health district.

Osti said, "the system can implode pretty quickly -- we learned that last year."

The problem facing the valley's hospitals has come about because the number of psychiatric patients has risen faster than the state's ability to care for them.

By law, such patients must be given a physical check-up in emergency rooms before they can obtain psychiatric care, but the mentally ill are often kept in emergency room beds for days while waiting for space at the state's campus.

This can become a problem for the general population -- who may be kept waiting longer for emergency room beds -- and for the mentally ill, who may not be obtaining the care they need as fast as they need it.

On Thursday afternoon, Jonna Triggs, director of Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services, the state agency that runs the campus on Charleston, got a phone call that showed her things were getting tough in area emergency rooms.

"They said, 'We got this gal, she's been here four days and she's highly agitated. Where is she on the (waiting) list?'th" Triggs said.

She reminded the hospital staffer that a less acute patient in the same emergency room was further up the list and suggested they switch the order of the two patients.

Triggs said she had no explanation about why the numbers of psychiatric patients in emergency rooms had gone up in the last week or so.

Still, she said she was "trying to be positive," given the support shown for mental health by the 2005 Legislature.

"It's a time of waiting -- but not too much longer."