Law enforcement officers wrestle with loss of mental health facility

Sunday, February 8, 2004

The closing of the Southwest Missouri Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center in El Dorado Springs is a hot topic in the area and a deep concern to many throughout Vernon County -- and several surrounding counties as well. As revealed at Thursday's public meeting one of the fallouts of the closing of this facility is going to be complications for law enforcement officers trying to find beds for acute care patients. An acute care patient is commonly one who is under 96-hour observation, like someone who has attempted suicide, had a nervous breakdown or a mental health consumer who has quit taking prescribed medication.

With the closing of Southwest Missouri Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center, 20 long-term care beds will be moved to Fulton State Hospital, to replace the alcohol and drug treatment facility there. The acute care beds are to be farmed out to private care providers.

Felix Vinsenz, of the Missouri Department of Mental Health, said that the Department of Mental Health recognized that the closing of the El Dorado Springs facility would have a huge impact on the community and promised to enact policies to lessen the impact --particularly in reference to the acute care beds. "We mean to maintain that capacity by purchasing it out into the community and retaining it in this community, rather than moving them out to Fulton, and ensuring that those services are still available in a very proximal way for use in the community."

However, several local law enforcement officials pointed out a crucial flaw in this plan. A state-run facility is required by law to take patients that have been ordered by a judge into custody, whereas private organizations often turn away patients -- particularly if they are violent. Cedar County Associate Probate Judge Joe Phillips said, "I've been through this with the people from Springfield, Joplin and Nevada before we got this (Southwest Missouri Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center) and I've had some snippy little gal call me at 2 o'clock in the morning and say 'You can't do that. Your deputy can't put him in here.'"

The closing of the El Dorado Springs facility is going to be expensive. Polk County Sheriff Mike Parson represented several area sheriffs due to Thursday's meeting conflicting with a previously scheduled sheriffs' conference, read from a prepared statement from the sheriffs. The document expressed dismay that the Department of Mental Health, rather than solving any problems, was shifting responsibility and expenses to the local level. "What do we do, as a local sheriff in a local community, who do we shift the burden to?" said Parson.

Bolivar Chief of Police Michael Siebert, representing the Police Chiefs Association for Southwest Missouri, said, "You are going to obviously upset police chiefs from all over southwest Missouri. They have nowhere to go with these people. I would like you to come with me some time, at 8 o'clock on a Friday night and try to find a bed. There are none available. And that goes all the way from Springfield to Joplin and even as far a West Plains. The Sheriff doesn't want them and, obviously, I have nowhere to take them and often we have to go as far away as Farmington. And that is a pretty long time to be handcuffed to go to a mental facility."

Joe Terry, former mental health coordinator, said that he had seen cases where mental health patients were picked up, cuffed and taken to Joplin, just to be denied entrance and then taken to Kansas City. "Or in some cases, in desperation, they take them home and drop them off ... It's cruel and unusual punishment. You don't cuff somebody who has cancer, put them in the back of a car and drive them around until you can find a hospital that will take them."

Vinsenz said the lack of beds and facilities is not unique to southwest Missouri. "In budgetary times like this it is really hard to expand capacity."

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