The crisis in the state mental health system – leading to a backlog in jail inmates needing care and state officials facing legal penalties – has been years in the making.
A court-appointed mediator is trying to sort out the problem of 82 criminal defendants in local jails who need mental health care.
Their plight was detailed in a lawsuit heard by Denver District Judge Martin Egelhoff in December.
Still, lawmakers and state Department of Human Services officials had plenty of warning that a crisis was brewing.
“The state has turned a blind eye to it,” said Iris Eytan, one of two special prosecutors appointed by Egelhoff to oversee the lawsuit.
Eytan and Marcus Lock, the other prosecutor, say that if the suit isn’t resolved within two months, they will seek fines against the state.
The case was filed on behalf of alleged bicycle thief Eugene Zuniga, who was found incompetent to stand trial but could not get a place in the state mental hospital in Pueblo.
In a 1999 settlement of a federal lawsuit by Pueblo patients alleging overcrowding and maltreatment, the state agreed to have a ratio of staff to patients of 1.35 to 1.
The problems were compounded in the years that followed by falling revenues and tight budgets that forced legislators to cut millions of dollars from mental health programs.
In 2003 and 2004, lawmakers cut funding to the state hospitals at Pueblo and Fort Logan by $11 million, and space for 103 patients was eliminated at both.
At the same time, $30 million – about 8 percent of the total budget – was cut from community mental health centers. Those centers offered treatment aimed at keeping the mentally ill from needing hospital care.
Even as the budget cuts took hold, state officials warned that an emergency loomed in the backlog of mentally ill inmates.
In a January 2005 memo, human services director Marva Hammons told the court:”As you may be aware (the state hospital) has experienced a dramatic increase in adult competency evaluation referrals.”
From 2003 and 2004, the number of referrals rose from 433 to 564 in 2005.
By last year, the number had reached 815.
Many community mental health programs, at the same time, were cutting back.
At the Arapahoe/Douglas Mental Health Network, for example, services were limited to only the most seriously ill, said Scott Thoemke, executive director.
Sometimes more than 100 people a month were turned away, Thoemke said.
“It was nasty,” he said.
The consequences of these policies, mental health advocates said, were clear.
“The sick won’t just go away. They’ll end up filling the jails,” said Kyle Sargent, who at the time was public policy director for the Mental Health Association of Colorado.
Voters’ passage of Referendum C last year, which enabled the state to keep more revenue, has begun to ease the problem.
The Human Services Department last year got $50 million for a new 200-bed unit to house the mentally ill who have been charged with crimes.
The unit, however, isn’t expected to be complete until 2009.
Then last month, the department was granted $3.5 million to reopen some beds and fill 20 full-time staff positions.
At the same time, a group of community treatment centers has proposed treating less serious illness at the county jails.
That plan would cost the state $753,711, said George DelGrosso, president of the Colorado Behavioral Healthcare Council.
Hammons, however, said she wasn’t sure that community facilities could handle those charged with crimes.
Steve Schoenmakers, superintendent of the state mental hospital in Pueblo, said solving the backlog will have to involve the community health centers.
And the Pueblo hospital is trying to hire additional staffers, he said.
Schoenmakers said that before the court fight, he sought to make more beds, in unused units, available to those charged with crimes, but the request was denied.
The hospital is under court order – as a result of a lawsuit alleging overcrowding and disrepair – not to use the beds in question, Schoenmakers said.
The Fort Logan hospital in Denver does not treat those charged with crimes.
But Eytan, the special prosecutor, said even with such restrictions and budget constraints, the state could do better by its mentally ill.
“We’re spending a lot of money locking people up and not giving them help,” she said.
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
