NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The new eight-bed care facility for adults for Horizons Mental Health Center is now fully operational for overnight stays.
"It is designed to provide some intensive support to adults who are struggling with mental health issues," said Beth Akins with Horizons. "The idea is that we can admit them into our crisis center, we can provide them the intense supports for up to 72 hours, which will hopefully help divert them from hospitalization or incarceration due to mental health challenges."
The facility is four double-occupancy rooms, so they can take even numbers of patients by gender.
"There's a high percentage of people who have been incarcerated, who are actually there because of their mental health issues, not because they are necessarily doing criminal things," Akins said. "We are really focusing on trying to provide preventative care to hopefully keep them out of the jail systems."
Part of what is helping also, is the relationships that the people who have had to use the center now have with people that have taken care of them, so that they now feel comfortable telling someone when they are struggling, before they spiral out of control.
"We're providing them the services in the community where they need the help," Akins said. "We can hopefully engage them and give them the medications or the therapy or the supports that they need so that they can feel better."
The Horizons Carrefour Crisis Center was purchased thanks to a grant from the federal government as part of the process of making Horizons a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic.
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