The state will be spending $2 million to build a one-stop service center for the mentally ill in Western North Carolina. It will open up space in emergency rooms and jails by providing early intervention, crisis response, and urgent care.
For too many people with an acute mental health crisis, care often boils down to days spent languishing in the emergency room waiting for a bed in a psychiatric hospital.
About 150,000 visits to ERs statewide involve an acute psychiatric or addiction crisis, according to the state, and 13 percent return within 30 days.
An additional amount seek care for the same kinds of trauma through other services.
The facility will be staffed with healthcare professionals and open 24-7, right down the road from me. Nobody will be turned away. Mission Health and Buncombe County will pick up the tab for renovations, and the county will provide about $500,000 a year worth of landlord and security costs.
As a sad sign of the long way we’ve come, Baby, the Neil Dobbins Center, which was Asheville’s first wet detox center, will be converted to a crisis center for children. And Smoky Mountain LME COO Christina Carter says that is “one of the greatest needs of our region.”
