"That is something we'd like to look at to try and change, to give the department some more control, to at least give us a place at the table."Īaron Bolton/Montana Public Radio The mental health wing of the Flathead County Detention Center in Kalispell, Montana. "That is something we would like to address with you," Chad Parker, an attorney for the health department, told the Children, Families, Health, and Human Services Interim Committee in July. Now, state health officials are asking for more: they want lawmakers to change criminal commitment laws so that the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Serviceshas a say, before a judge orders a patient committed to the Montana State Hospital. The legislature created a $300 million fund to improve behavioral health care in the state and passed bills to increase transparency. This year, state lawmakers began to address the woes of the troubled state hospital, which lost its federal funding and accreditation in 2022 amid a rash of patient deaths. Increasing homelessness can exacerbate mental health conditions, and make treatment more difficult. Another factor driving jail overcrowding is Montana's recent population boom, which has pushed up housing costs. Meanwhile, at the Flathead County jail, the number of people waiting to be transferred there has grown since the pandemic, Root says. Surging demands for state psychiatric bedsįor years, the Montana State Hospital has struggled to keep up with the number of people who are criminally committed to the facility. But because of bottlenecks in services here, and across the country, people in jail with serious mental illness are waiting months to receive the care needed to "restore" their competency to stand trial. Many inmates wait for months to be admitted to the Montana State Hospital for mental health treatment so they can stand trial.īefore their legal case can proceed, people charged with crimes in Montana must understand the charges they face and participate in their own defense. "So, they just deteriorate within our facility," Root says of her and other inmates with serious mental health conditions.Īaron Bolton/Montana Public Radio The entrance to the Flathead County Detention Center in Kalispell, Montana. Meanwhile, the northwestern Montana jail where she's waiting isn't equipped to treat mental illness, and the jail staff can't force her to take her prescribed psychiatric medication. The woman in the Kalispell jail had spent months on the waiting list over the summer the list reached 70 people. Like many inmates deemed unfit for trial due to a mental health condition, she has been stuck on a waiting list for the Montana State Hospital's 54-bed forensic unit, which stabilizes inmates through medication and treatment so they are competent to stand trial. An evaluation after her arrest determined that mental illness prevented her from standing trial, and that she required treatment at the Montana State Hospital, the state-run inpatient psychiatric hospital. This woman was charged with burglary in September 2022, Root says. Inside the cell, dimly lit by a single window, a woman is curled up under a fleece blanket, only her bright-pink fingernails sticking out. "She's been here almost a year, just laying on her bed," she says. Inside the white-brick hallways of the Flathead County Detention Center, Jail Commander Jen Root walks up to a steel door and looks through a small window at the inmate.
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