(Aug. 2, 2017) In June 2016, the Treatment Advocacy Center’s Office of Research & Public Affairs (ORPA) published a report that found there are fewer state psychiatric hospital beds per capita in the United States than at any time since before the 1850s.
Going, Going, Gone: Trends and Consequences of Eliminating State Psychiatric Beds is ORPA’s fourth census of state hospital beds in the last decade, and it shows that nearly 50% of the state hospital beds remaining in 2016 were occupied by forensic patients due to the continued criminalization of those with serious mental illness.
While the psychiatric bed population continues to drop, ORPA collaborated with the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina to discover that relatively small changes in common policy and practice could dramatically reduce pretrial bed waits and the mass incarceration of individuals with serious mental illness. The findings were published in Emptying the ‘New Asylums’: A Beds Capacity Model to Reduce Mental Illness Behind Bars.
Since the study, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has established a serious mental illness portfolio of research and statistics which includes the significant demand on state hospitals by those with serious mental illness in the criminal justice system.
We will continue the fight to restore state psychiatric hospital beds so that those living with serious mental illness get treatment and care. Join us and sign our pledge to give those in need a bed instead.