4/9/2023 0 Comments Limbo bar suit![]() ![]() "People have been frustrated by that because it's like, 'Why aren't you building bigger hospitals?'" said Karen Ranus, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness - Central Texas, which works to improve the lives of people with mental illness. With current demand, HHSC would still be 555 beds short, according to HHSC data. Legislators expect to complete funding in next legislative session and bring the total to more than $1 billion.īut for all that money, the state will add just 350 total beds to its current stock of 2,269. In response, state leaders have pushed through $745 million to rebuild and expand the state hospital system. "The consequences of this are visible on the pages of our daily newspapers: individuals in crises, increased costs to the State and local governments, suicides in county jails and in the community, and stress to families," according to the 2016 report. That study found Texas needed roughly 1,300 more state hospital beds.Ī 2016 report by HHSC's Joint Committee on Access and Forensic Services, which monitors the waitlist, said the backlog had reached a "crisis levels" and the state would need 1,800 more beds over the next eight years. In 2014, the state hired consulting firm CannonDesign to study the hospital system and waitlist. Texas officials have seen this predicament building for years. By 2020, there were 970 people on both lists combined, and wait times for more scarce maximum-security beds exceeded a year in some cases. The Health and Human Services Commission divides its waitlists for people charged with crimes into two categories: maximum security for potentially violent people and non-maximum security for everyone else. The average number of maximum security inmates in Texas' county jails waiting for state hospital beds never dropped below 230 days in 2019, peaking in August with 335 days. Efforts to fix the problem have not reversed the trend, and a costly rebuild of the state's mental hospitals may not meet demand and won't be complete for years. Since Ben's time on the waitlist, that backlog of people, locked in limbo across the state, has reached historic levels. Just stay in the waiting room, and your waiting room is a jail cell.'" "If you're dedicated to restoring these people's health, you don't say, 'We'll get to you in a year. He'll just have to keep bleeding,'" said Keith Hampton, a criminal defense attorney who represents mentally ill defendants on the waitlist. ![]() "The analogy is, we've got a guy in jail bleeding to death and a doctor saying, 'Well, we're all filled up at the moment. ![]() Ben was put behind hundreds of people on the state's waitlist, and the hospitals were admitting two or three people per day, Sandra said. ![]() Nobody had explained to Ben and Sandra that Texas' state hospitals were full. Once stable, they're returned to jail to face the criminal justice system.ĭespite the judge's order, Ben wouldn't be sent to the state hospital for months. If they can't, they're sent to a state hospital for competency restoration, which involves medication and therapy. In Texas, defendants must be able to understand the charges against them and assist in their own defense. A judge ordered him to be sent to a state hospital. Not that I wanted to get charged with anything."īen was booked into the Williamson County Jail and was soon declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. "I just didn't know how to fix it, until I found out I could go to the mental hospital for a lot longer time. "I had to find a different way to get help. If he could stay in treatment long enough to get stabilized, maybe Ben could turn his life around. According to Sandra, the police said they could charge Ben with the second-degree felony, and he would be sent to a state mental hospital for treatment.īen and Sandra saw a prolonged stay in a state hospital as his best shot at improving. Ben never took the sword out of its sheath, but his threat of violence opened the door for a felony charge of aggravated assault. The panic and fear were audible in his trembling voice as he urged the police to hurry, and he watched his mother run out the front door. "I didn't know what he was going to do."īen's brother, Philip, called 911. I can't explain it unless you have a cat or something stares at you before they swat you in the face," Sandra said. "That's when he stood up and just stared through me. Sandra finally told Ben there was no money, and he snapped. He thought he had three wives coming to visit, and that the federal government had paid him $500 million for busting a drug ring. But that November, Ben's mental decline reached a climax that would change the trajectory of his life. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |