The state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which spurned a consultant's warning four years ago, does not have enough beds or staff to treat new patients, officials say. The shortage comes as 80 percent of those admitted to such facilities are arriving via the criminal justice system.
Union officials blame the shortages on what they call the state's cost-saving policy of pushing care of the mentally ill into the private sector.
The state's psychiatric inpatient capacity declined from about 3,000 beds in the 1980s to about 960 now, a squeeze the state's top health official calls a crisis.
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8 comments:
If someone murders another person and claims insanity they get to go to a mental institution instead of a prison. WTH!!
Most of those people belong in a prison.
Don't forget those being sent to go peeking in restrooms of their choice instead of mental treatment.
The policies of the 1980s were shortsighted. Community mental health needs are overwhelming what little remains of the system. Jail and prison nursing staff are wholly unprepared, understaffed and undertrained to accommodate this growing problem. And what we see is just the tip of an ugly iceberg, as drugs, poverty, and desperation increase the numbers of mentally ill.
Please make room for Martin Owemaley !!!
Just another Democrat scam on taxpayers. Their solution to EVERYTHING is too throw my tax dollars at it.
TRUMP 2016
the mentally ill are thrown in the white house and the voters booths
What about all the nut cases we got walking around Slumsbury? They are begging money and peeing in public, eating out of trash cans.
If Maryland hadn't closed most of its psych hospitals, there would be plenty of room. The PC police said we cannot pigeon hole these patients by their conditions, and they have to be treated just like everyone else, thus prison is the only place for them to go.
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