A group of mental health service providers in the Staunton area have pooled their resources to push for the creation of a new facility aimed at treating people in crisis. In our final report in a series on mental health care in Virginia, WMRA’s Jordy Yager has this report.
Take a minute, and think about five people you love — the first five who come to mind is fine. Now, pick one of them. Got it? Now, imagine he or she has a mental illness, as one in five adults actually do — bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia. And then, imagine they’re in crisis.
DUSTIN WRIGHT: So you, being the loved one, you want to get them help. What do you do? And most people shrug their shoulders.
For seven years Dustin Wright worked in the emergency unit at Valley Community Services Board. It’s the main mental health service provider in the Staunton, Waynesboro, and Augusta area. In short, it’s where you should go if you or your loved one is in crisis.
WRIGHT: So you’re coming in, you do the screening, and you need crisis stab or the person starts medicating with alcohol and you need detox.
Wright says more than half the time someone comes in needing “crisis stab” or crisis stabilization, they’re told they have to wait three to four days.
WRIGHT: Then you start to see people’s eyes opening, and saying what can we do to help with this?
That’s because the Staunton area doesn’t have a CSU — a crisis stabilization unit. CSU’s operate as mid-level short-term residential treatment facilities, for when a person’s crisis is not so severe that they need to be hospitalized at a place like Western State, but it’s serious enough that it can’t be treated at home or ignored.
Without a CSU, clinicians at Valley are forced to send patients to either the Wellness Recovery Center in Charlottesville, which has 12 beds, or the Arbor House in Harrisonburg, which has 7 beds. Those beds fill up consistently, and patients can stay for up to two weeks, which means folks in crisis in the valley are told to wait. And crisis does not wait.
WRIGHT: You see a lot of anger, you see a lot of frustration, because they’re already angry at the illness, they’re frustrated, they’re grieving. And once the one person is in crisis, the whole family or their support system’s in crisis. And then you’re adding more fuel to the fire.
Wright is the president of the Staunton chapter of NAMI — the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It’s the largest grassroots mental health organization in the country. By the end of this summer the Staunton chapter is planning to deliver a proposal to State Senator Emmet Hanger, who’s agreed to shepherd a bill into the next General Assembly session. The proposal will seek state funding for a valley CSU and Detoxification center.
LAURA TUOMISTO: Every community has a medical hospital, every community has a corrections system. Every community does not have a CSU.
Staunton therapist Laura Tuomisto is a local NAMI board member.
TUOMISTO: Creating this I think not only gives the brick and mortar a safe place, but it also sends the message to the community that your mental health is important just like those other things, and you’re not alone, because it’s a big enough issue that we need a facility.
The new facility would not only help patients in the Staunton area get quicker access to treatment, it would also help ease strains at Western State, which with 246 beds, is one of the largest mental health inpatient facilities in the state.
KALA DOSS: It would play a huge role.
Kala Doss is an occupational therapist at Western State Hospital, where staff are having to treat patients that might be better served elsewhere. Like when people abuse drugs or alcohol as a means of self-medication to treat their mental illness. And then they end up at Western.
DOSS: So they’re drying out. We are not a detox center, we make that very clear. We help with recovery, but we’re not a detox center…From there, it’s taking a bed from someone who has true psychiatric crisis who’s waiting at another facility needing to come to our hospital.
Doss isn’t saying that patients in need of detox don’t warrant the best care in the state. Rather, she’s arguing that they do. And that a stand alone CSU and Detox Center would be the best fit. And it would allow hospitals like Western State to better treat people in more severe stages of crisis.
Just as a new center would ease strain on front door services of people coming into the system, it would also ease the back door.
JOHN BEGHTOL: Over my 37 years at Western, I saw so many people stranded at Western. They’re clinically ready to go.
John Beghtol worked at Western State for nearly four decades. He retired two years ago, and is championing the new CSU/Detox center in Staunton. The problem, he says, is that once they’re ready to leave, some patients don’t have anywhere to go.
BEGHTOL: As a hospital, we were always advocating for more funding in the community service boards so they would have the housing. As you mentioned, it’s always housing at the bottom line, and then support services. And the money just doesn’t seem to get where it should be.
A new center could help that, he says. But that will ultimately be left up to state legislators. Beghtol’s no stranger to politics. He fought hard to get the $140 million in new additions to bring Western into the 21st century. And though the Staunton group doesn’t have an exact price tag yet for a new CSU and Detox facility, that’s not stopping them from moving forward.
BEGHTOL: Some clinicians are reluctant to use politics, it’s like dirty. Well, politics is what makes it happen guys. So I’m that guy in there pushing, hell, let’s go for it. Let’s go for it all. I’m not impressed with people who tell you to shut up. But it is coming together.