Poleson, Montana – When this small answer – West Montana is required to be charged for any crime in the city Mental health careThe possibilities are that they will lock the size of a walk-in toilet in a basement gel cell.
For months, the prison in the deserted cell has been imprisoned and scratched the word “Love Hearts” in the brown paint at the metal door. Their pasing is wearing a path on the floor of the cement. Many are kept in a tall condition, not convicted of any crime, but not enough to be released. They sleep in a narrow bed next to a toilet. The only scene is a fluorescent-laudit hallway visible with a small window on the door.
Lake County’s Attorney James Lapotka stood at the center of the cell that he was talking about people here. He expanded his arms, his fingers were just ashamed to touch the opposite walls. “I am expressed concern here,” said Lapotka.
Catherine Hawton / KFF Health News
Last year, a man sentenced for rifle theft was 129 days in that room. According to the court record, he was waiting to open a place at the Psychiatric Hospital, the only state -run psychiatrist of Montana, after the fact that a mental health evaluator needed his care.
At the same time, a person in the next room was in the same waitlist for about five months. He was facing an almost daily Stein in the emergency restraint chair of the prison-a steel contrast in his shoulders, arms and leg straps in the foam. He regularly sees the mental health doctor in the prison. Nevertheless, Lake County Detention Commander Joel Shear said the man regularly felt psychological episodes and when he was coming to him and could be there until he was shouted, he asked to lock on the chair.
“Anyone who is doing mental health crisis – they’re not here,” Lapotka said. “We are nowhere else.”
Lake County is an example of how the nationwide communities are in two, about 30 square feet of separated cells Failed to provide mental health care – especially in crisis care. About half of the people locked in a local prison in the United States have mental illness.
More than half of the 20 sheriffs in WiMing have told lawmakers there that they have been living in crisis for mental health care for months, Waifil reported in January. Nevada has fought despite the $ 500 fine for each jail patient, whose treatment is delayed. Oregon, the disabled rights, says that the state has delayed the delay after the death of two people in the jail while being in a psychiatrist in the state.
In Montana, counties are imprisoned in prison with mental health when they are not equipped to operate when they have the capacity of the Montana State Hospital. Some local hospitals have their own patient mental illness bed. As a result, people who have been arrested for anything from small theft to criminal attacks can be jailed with their mental health worse for months or more. Many were not convicted of any crime.
Montana officials have been reported to have problems for years. State officials have said that all the people have no place to order the hospital. There are 270 beds in the psychiatric hospital, with 54 people for criminal judicial system. The shortage of employees can further shrink that power.
The Montana Public Health and Human Services Department has supported the two bills in this legislature that will protect the state from the responsibility of delay if the Montana State Hospital is fulfilled. Prior to the bills, the company wrote that hospitals and staff were constrained because of the lack of community -based services and the Montana court “fought to maintain the appropriate level” because of the lack of control over the patients.
The company also announced on April 25 that a grant was available to help establish a jail -based mental health stability service .5 $ 6.5 million was available.
Officials say patients deserve care near home in less limited settings. However, counties say that local services do not have the need.
“You have to work hard first,” said Matt Kuntz, executive director of the National Alliance on mental illness. “You need to make the bed.”
Health lawyers have supported a proposal so that the state needs to be paid for community promises. The move is moving towards Gianfort, the Republican Governor after the State House and the Senate crossed. Another bill that was still pending, will create a new psychiatrist for the people of the judicial system. However, it may take years to implement these ideas.
The number of patients in patients has decreased for people with serious mental illness nationwide. At one time, the drop was deliberately, part of a movement far away from locked people in a state -run mental hospital. However, the centers of the local homeley, the objective fix did not fill the vacuum.
Western chief executive officer Bob Lopp said the West Montana Mental Health Center had to shut down some of his crisis because of money problems. These include an advantage less than one mile from Lake County Jail.
“If the fund is not where you are not able to do it for the sake of logic and hope that it will come,” said Lopp.
Pour has promised to redefine the behavioral health system in the state. Mental health workers in small towns make local services come from year to year and see these national promises to believe.
Health Department spokesman Holy Matkin said the company was proud of his work to fix “long -time breaking systems” and it would improve services for people who need care for patients in their community.
Lake County is known as Instagram-worthy stop on the way to the glacier national park. It overlap with the Flathead Indian Reservation, the Bitter Root Arbitration Land, the upper pend deril and the Kutena tribe. It is a piece of the Rocky Mountains and an entrance to a few million acres of desert. Poleson, prison county seats and sites, one of the largest lakes on the west of the Mississippi River is a city of 5,600 on the south bank of Lake.
Vincent River has served as the only mental health physician in the prison for 25 years. He said he was not always available because he was the only psychologist in the four answers -West Montana County, who evaluates whether a person in the jail evaluates whether a psychiatrist needs to be taken care of.
Some are released without care if they are long lasting to the waitlist of the State Hospital.
“I talk to the members of this family. I urge me to fear their voice in their voice and tell me what is going on for a few days or weeks or months,” said River. “And then I can’t take people to the hospital that is a huge crisis.”
This is not just a state hospital. The river said that he could not get people in the bed of a psychiatrist in Montana because there is very little because. Instead, he tried to stabilize people while in prison. That is deficient.
Jail cannot force anyone to take medicines without a court order in jail psychosis and a qualified doctor is in the hands of the prescription. Due to the bad conditions in the crowded crowd, Lake County’s old age facilities have faced the litigation and patients should see wherever the river is.
There is no place for the prison restraint chair. The jail staff leaves the strapd-down prisoners in a hallway or locker room.
The river says that a lot gradually becomes better and leaves isolation. Nothing
“They are psychologically and lonely there,” he said in compassion for what they were saying to them. “
Locals are working to fill some gaps. A mobile team launched in February is working by people who live with mental and substance use disorders to provide peer support. But in the crisis, there are only two options for anyone: prison or emergency house.
The house reserved for people in Pollson’s Providence St. Joseph Medical Center drops both patients isolated and without privacy. The dense glass of the locked door looks at a busy emergency house hallway.
Those who have degraded enough to feel dangerous to themselves or others are sent to the streets.
ER physician Rebecca Bantadeli says hospital staff can be kept in the patients for several days in Montana and the surrounding states crushed for an open psychotherapy bed. Some of these rejects care.
“We’re not really helping them,” said Bantadeli. “They think they’re in prison.”
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