Public care for the mentally ill in Minnesota is deeply flawed, with patients cycling in and out of county jails and hospital ERs because of a severe shortage of psychiatric beds and community treatment, according to a stark new review by the state agency in charge of those services.
In a report prepared for the Legislature and released quietly last week, the Department of Human Services found major gaps in the treatment of severe mental disorders, often resulting in people having to live in a "frustrating limbo" until proper care becomes available.
These gaps have created a crisis at the state's second-largest psychiatric institution, Anoka-Metro Regional Treatment Center, where 30 to 40 percent of the hospital's 175 beds are occupied by people who no longer need to be there but have nowhere else to go.
The bottlenecks at Anoka-Metro are so severe that the state may forced to consider building more psychiatric hospital beds, according to Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson. Such a move would reverse a five-decade trend toward moving psychiatric patients out of institutions.
"This is a serious issue," Jesson said in an interview Friday. "People are sitting in emergency rooms waiting to get into [Anoka-Metro]. They're not getting the care they need, and that exacerbates their mental illness."
Though focused on Anoka-Metro, the 110-page report provides a penetrating look at statewide gaps in Minnesota's psychiatric services. The report paints a bleak portrait of a system that suffers from an acute shortage of beds and often fails to provide patients with adequate support once they are discharged.
Rural areas face particularly limited services. The report finds that people in all but 13 of Minnesota's 87 counties live in federally designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas. In 2011, there were 643 licensed psychiatrists in the state, or about 1 for every 8,200 people.
"Community hospitals in Minnesota have complained bitterly about the lack of state facilities that forces them to board people in psychiatric crisis," the report said.