Sonoma County has finally mothballed a nearly half-century-old troubled mental health facility that for years evoked a darker era of psychiatric care, a time when patients in crisis were locked away in drab institutions and forgotten.
Once considered a model of modern behavioral health care, the severely pared-down Oakcrest psychiatric facility over the years devolved into a Band-Aid effort at caring for the county’s most emotionally and mentally troubled residents.
Plagued by patient escapes, aging facilities, inadequate services for adults, no services at all for adolescents and, at times, even bed bugs, the facility had become a stain on the county’s mental health department.
On Monday, the county will move into a brand-new urgent care center for mental health patients, one that will provide much-needed services for children and serve as an access point for low-income residents seeking outpatient or emergency treatment.
To continue reading this article by Martin Espinoza, go to: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/n...ys-new-mental-health
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