Relief could be in sight for Thurston County’s mentally ill

Soon, Thurston and Mason county residents who are picked up by police during a mental health crisis won’t be taken to the county jails.

They won’t be held in maximum security cells intended for high-risk offenders in an already crowded facility. Instead, they’ll be taken to the new Thurston-Mason Mental Health Triage Center.

The building, at 3285 Ferguson St. in Tumwater, will likely open in mid-September.

The outside of the building looks functional and secure. The inside is much the same — but pale-blue walls and a large window make the interior seem airy. That’s the point, said Mark Freedman, Thurston County’s social services director.

“It’s meant to be a therapeutic environment,” Freedman said. “But a major part of it was looking at everything and making sure no one could hurt themselves.”

County officials have high hopes for the 7,500-square-foot facility, which has 10 beds and will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“This triage center has been a vision and a dream of mine, and of many others, for many years,” said Thurston County Commissioner Cathy Wolfe.

After about two years of planning and construction, the facility came to fruition with the help of state funding. Freedman said construction cost about $2.5 million — about $1.8 million coming from the state and the remainder from the recently formed Thurston-Mason Behavioral Health Organization.

Operating the facility will cost an estimated $3.5 million to $4 million per year, with that funding coming from the Behavioral Health organization, Freedman said.

The ultimate goal of the facility is to divert people in crisis from the Thurston and Mason county jails and to provide them with treatment.

“That’s the bottom line. We do not want the mentally ill in our jails,” Wolfe said.

Who is eligible?

The triage facility is set up to help people who have committed crimes because of their mental illness, Freedman said.

These aren’t people who are committing crimes with malicious intent. The facility will help people committing crimes because they’re confused or for their own survival.

Freedman said he expects to see people suspected of committing theft and similar crimes.

“We’re looking at a population who did a crime more in terms of their own survival, people who are basically nonviolent,” Freedman said.

Patients would have to meet the conditions for civil commitment — they would have to be a danger to themselves or others, or be in danger of physical harm because of an inability to provide for essential human needs.

Prosecutors and public defenders agree there already are people in the Thurston County jail who could have benefitted from these services.

Public Defense Director Daryl Rodrigues estimates that about 40 percent of people in the Thurston County jail have mental illness or substance abuse issues. He said the problem was created years ago with deinstitutionalization of mental health patients and a lack of funding to help them in the outside world. The already-limited funding was cut during the recession.

Prosecutor Jon Tunheim said the criminal justice system isn’t necessarily broken — people have just ended up in the wrong system. Having a place to bring mentally ill people will help them end up in the right place, he said.

“The criminal justice system has been acting as a bottom net as people fall through the other systems,” Tunheim said.

He characterized the triage facility as a major component of criminal justice reform and said that it will work together with other reforms coming soon. A mobile mental health outreach program should come online in early 2017.

“The ultimate goal of that mobile program is to connect people with the services that they need before they end up in the criminal justice system,” Tunheim said.

Treating the cause of criminal behavior should decrease recidivism, Rodrigues said.

“By actually providing them treatment, we’re reducing the risk of them having another police contact,” Rodriguez said.

The history

Wolfe said that she began to see the need for a triage facility when Olympia’s Providence St. Peter Hospital stopped psychiatric boarding.

The practice was questioned before a state Supreme Court ruling in 2014 found that the state could not use overcrowding at state-certified mental-health facilities as an excuse to hold people in local hospitals — often without treatment.

In August 2014, the Supreme Court struck down the practice of psychiatric boarding.

During that year, the Legislature added $7.3 million to the state budget for mental health services — including creation of new mental health facilities in rural Eastern Washington, King County, and in Thurston and Mason counties.

With that goal in mind, commissioners from Thurston and Mason counties signed an interlocal agreement in September 2015 to create the Thurston-Mason Behavioral Health Organization. According to the agreement, the organization is funded by a combination of local, state and federal money. The organization must run at least one mental health facility that people in both counties can access.

The board running the organization is made up of two Thurston County commissioners, Wolfe and Bud Blake, and one Mason County commissioner, Terri Jeffreys.

Jeffreys said that mental health crises and substance abuse are issues shared by the two counties, so it’s a natural partnership.

The facility

In November 2015, the organization awarded a contract to Big Rock Construction Inc. to remodel an existing building to become the triage facility.

Freedman said Big Rock was chosen, in part, because of its ability to execute the project with special attention to detail. Everything in the building — from windows to floors to doors — had to be constructed with safety in mind.

The floors in the triage facility are slightly softer than normal floors to cushion the fall of anyone throwing themselves to the ground, Freedman said. The windows, if broken, shatter into tiny pieces. The door handles — costing about $500 each — are sculpted so that nothing can be hung from them. Covers to electrical outlets are fitted with safety screws so that they can’t be removed easily.

The furniture is safe by design, Freedman said. Mattresses sit atop gray, plastic beds whose bottoms sit flush to the ground. That way, no one can hide under them. Matching plastic wardrobes are bolted to the walls.

The common area features tables, chairs and purple plastic couches. It adjoins to a station where treatment providers can keep an eye on the facility — inside and outside — through cameras fed to a monitor.

There’s a “seclusion room” lined with padding to prevent patients from hurting themselves.

“It’s your classic well-padded room,” Freedman said.

Treatment services at the facility will be provided by Telecare. Commissioner Sandra Romero said the entity is newly licensed in Thurston County, but has been active in Washington for several years.

“I’m really hopeful that this facility will make a difference,” Romero said.

Blake shares that hope.

“We want Thurston County to be number one in taking care of our constituents,” he said.

This story was originally published September 3, 2016 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Relief could be in sight for Thurston County’s mentally ill."