New Mexico

According to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill about 44 percent of people living with a mental illness have been arrested at least once in their life. With resources lacking to treat mental illness, many wind up in the criminal justice system. According to Doña Ana County Detention Center Director Chris Barela, He estimates that around 33-57% of people in the detention center are suffering from some form of mental illness. He says a lack of mental health resources leads many to end up behind bars. “What we find is that the people that are coming into the jail are coming in in such a disorganized chaotic way,” Barela said. “That we have to stabilize them and get them back to a stability point. That’s occurring because outside the jail before they get to us they are not receiving the services, or they aren’t attending the services, or they’re not taking their meds the way they’re supposed to.” Major Brent Barlow with the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Department says all officers are trained to handle people with mental illness, but it’s not always easy to determine if someone needs to be taken to the hospital or the detention center. “It’s kind of a case by case issue,” Barlow said. “Sometimes it’s very easy to discern that someone is suffering from a serious mental health issue. Again, like Las Cruces Police Department we put our deputies through training in basic academy about how to identify people suffering from different levels of mental illness, as well as how to respond and hopefully deescalate those. It really depends on what those person’s behaviors are at the time.” Ron Gurley with the National Alliance for Mental Illness in Doña Ana County has worked with law enforcement to help train officers; he says local law enforcement does the best they can. “They very seriously do train their officers,” Gurley said. “We help with the training as well. Officers can be trained to react to the mentally ill, that doesn’t mean they’re always going to do that they way they are trained, but I would put us up against anybody in the country right now in terms of the number of officers that are officially trained.” When officers bring someone suffering with a mental illness in, they could wait in an emergency room for up to 16 hours with the person before they are able to see a doctor, and patients that are told they need to be admitted by the courts have to be taken all the way to Las Vegas, New Mexico where the only state mental health facility is located. Ron Gurley says there are not enough beds in the state to address New Mexico’s mental health needs. “We need to increase our bed space in Las Vegas by 200 at least,” Gurley said. “We need a 100 bed here, either to buy a hospital, rent a hospital. A public bed versus a private bed, and we don’t have those.” Dr. Wayne Lindstrom, director of the behavioral health services division of the department of Health and Human Services, says that more bed space isn’t always the best option. He is hoping to increase the number of crisis triage and stabilization centers in the state to help people before they get to the point of hospitalization. “That’s going to be a place where the police, or family members, or individuals can walk in and be assessed,” Lindstrom said. “And be able to stay for 3-7 days time, and hopefully be stabilized, and then be stepped down to an appropriate service level in the community.” Doña Ana County’s Crisis Triage Center has been built for close to 2 years, but it’s not operation because of a lack of funding and a medical group to run the facility. Lindstrom says he is trying to make it easier for these facilities to receive funding. “The answer to that is really going to be through Medicaid,” Lindstrom said. “So, we’re working with the centers for Medicaid and Medicare around making this a Medicaid covered service, and also working with the Department of Health around establishing licensing standards for this level of service. So, the kind of challenges you’ve had in Dona Ana County in opening the triage center, once we have this built into the Medicaid benefit will cease being a problem.” Until more resources are allocated toward mental health, many will continue to end up behind bars.

• published: 20 Jul 2015
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