Detroit News traces Michigan's psychiatric bed shortage through a jailed teen found incompetent in a killing
The Detroit News, in its Healing Justice series, followed a severely mentally ill, autistic 19-year-old who spent six months in the Wayne County Jail on a murder charge before being found incompetent to stand trial in August 2019. Instead of being admitted to a state hospital, he was discharged to a hospital emergency room and cycled between there and a group home. A former state mental health director called the situation systematic malpractice.
The article places the case in a statewide capacity picture: as of the end of September 2019, 138 people were waiting for state hospital treatment, and jailed defendants awaiting treatment after an incompetency finding waited an average of 127 days for a forensic evaluation. Michigan added 195 state psychiatric beds between 2010 and 2016 to reach 725, still 46th lowest in the nation at 7.3 per 100,000 residents. Those jailed pending a competency evaluation could wait as long as a year for admission to the Center for Forensic Psychiatry, according to the article. A state forensic official acknowledged a wait list for the legal status but said there were outliers.
The piece ties an individual placement failure to statewide bed counts and wait data.
Source: He's an accused killer and mentally ill — and Michigan can't find a place for him — The Detroit News, by Karen Bouffard
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