http://goo.gl/73c2tS
Emergency rooms have become a place of last resort for the mentally ill. With increased demand on proper mental health facilities, the practice known as psychiatric boarding -- temporarily holding mentally ill patients in hospital ERs until beds become available at certified treatment centers -- has become a serious problem nationwide. Now, it’s an unconstitutional one in Washington state.
Last year, 10 patients in Pierce County, Wash., sued to end their involuntary detention on the grounds they were not being held at appropriate treatment facilities. During a preliminary hearing before a mental health commissioner, experts testified that patients held in hospitals commonly receive little or no mental health care. It is testimony backed up by a 2008 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that found that boarding “often creates an environment in which a psychiatric patient slowly deteriorates.”