Nevada to focus on inmates’ mental health issues
By Sandra Chereb, Las Vegas Review-Journal
The state Department of Corrections is establishing a designated mental health facility at Northern Nevada Correctional Center to provide coordinated treatment for inmates housed around the state, Director James Dzurenda said.
Dzurenda told the state Board of Prison Commissioners, chaired by Gov. Brian Sandoval, that the goal is to concentrate services in one location and allow medical staff to tailor treatment to individual inmates.
The changes are being implemented in stages, Dzurenda said. The correctional center in Carson City will have an acute mental health unit for seriously mentally ill inmates. The facility also will have a transitional unit for inmates who have stabilized. Another transitional unit is being established at nearby Warm Springs Correctional Center.
Nevada continues to be ranked lowest in USA in mental health care services & supports. Prisons/Jails in NV need to ensure staff is trained in high quality mental health training. They need to treat psychosis like a stroke. One of the core ingredients to recovery is a “kind, supportive environment during and post hospitalization and step-down-programs.” They need to learn addiction is a brain illness too that co-occurs in more than 53% of mental health issues. This will require a significant transformation in Nevada where many continue to blame those will a brain illness. STOP STIGMA WITH SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION…EVIDENCE BASED.
NV is assuming only 20% of those in prisons have a mental health issue that represents 2,748 individuals. Will this new facility handle 2,748 individuals into treatment?
30 to 60 percent of those in prison/jail have substance abuse problems and, when including broad-based mental illnesses, the percentages increase significantly. For example, 50 percent of males and 75 percent of female inmates in state prisons, and 75 percent of females and 63 percent of male inmates in jails, will experience a mental health problem requiring mental health services in any given year. TREATMENT NEEDS TO BE AVAILABLE WITHIN THE JAIL/PRISON FACILITIES in addition to psychiatric hospitalization.
In Douglas County there continues to be no CIT (Crisis Intervention Training for law enforcement.) Nevada ranks low in the number of psychiatrists prescribing Clozapine (the gold standard for treatment resistant schizophrenia) and most psychiatrists in NV won’t accept patients that are seriously mentally ill. Plus there is a 50% deficit in psychiatrists and mental health clinicians across the USA. Have you thanked your provider this month? (-:
Glad to see NV’s Gov initiating improvements. He responded swiftly when letters by NAMI Moms written in support of a near-death experience of a NAMI loved-one in a NV prison (due directly to lack of prompt medical services. Finally, medical treatment provided and this NAMI-loved one is now thriving (nearly 3 years drug-free and continues mental health treatment in El Dorado County where services and supports are substantially stronger.)