Junction City, Ore — According to mental health experts, someone suffering from a severe mental illness is far more likely to be the victim of a crime than the criminal, but a proposal at the state level could leave the most vulnerable without a safe place for treatment.
It’s been called a mental health crisis. The need for intensive mental health care far outweighing the resources available.
What resources there are for the state’s most vulnerable population could be on the budgetary chopping block.
“The budget includes significant cuts at a level I find absolutely unnacceptable,” said Oregon Governor Kate Brown.
On December 1st, 2016, a newly elected governor Kate Brown announced her plans for the state’s budget.
In that budget plan, the closure of the Oregon State Hospital in Junction City.
“It was a very difficult decision for me to make, but I mentioned we are in a very tight fiscal environment,” said Gov. Brown.
The psychiatric facility, opened in 2015, was a compliment to the State Hospital in Salem.
I got an inside look at what goes on within.
“We provide the care and treatment for the people that are the most ill, in our society,” said Kerry Kelly.
Kelly is the interim deputy superintendent of the State Hospital in Junction City,
“Everybody that comes to the hospital returns to their community,” said Kelly.
Her goal, and the goal of her 350 colleagues, to treat those with severe mental illnesses, and prepare them for life outside hospital walls.
“We try to avoid sending people to State Hospital, and it’s only when they need this level of care that they should come here,” said Kelly.
The Oregon State Hospital in Junction City currently houses 81 patients, of those 14 are from Jackson County, 3 are from Josephine County and 2 are from Klamath County.
“They come to us in 2 different ways, they can be civilly committed, that means they’ve been determined by a court to be a danger to themselves or others. The second population that we serve here, are found to be guilty, except for insanity, that means at the time they committed their crime they were suffering from symptoms of their illness,” said Kelly.
Patients with severe illnesses could lose their treatment if the hospital were to close. Something legislators hope never happens.
“I’ve always been an advocate of more, more more for mental health because it would cut down on the cost of the jails, because a lot of people don’t belong in the jail, they belong in a facility,” said State Representative Sal Esquivel.
If the hospital were to close it could save the state an estimated $35 million, but those patients would have to be relocated.
“If the hospital closed, you’d be looking at a management of beds, so some of those individuals would be moving to Salem after there were openings in Salem with people being released, which the department of justice has told us we need to do a better job of not keeping people in the hospital for so long,” said State Senator Sara Gelser.
If there aren’t enough beds in Salem, that could mean many patients would be returning to Southern Oregon, where mental health care services are reeling from recent layoffs and a lack of care.
“We do have some services in the county but we don’t have super long term services where they can get their treatment, their medication and be monitored. You can’t help but have an impact on the whole system by displacing that many people,” said Jackson County District
Attorney Beth Heckert.
A possibility that those who care for our most vulnerable hope never becomes a reality.
“Legislators are going to have to make some really tough choices,” said Kerry Kelly.
In an interview before the state legislature reconvened, Governor Brown said she was willing to keep the Oregon State Hospital in Junction City open if lawmakers were able to find additional money.
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