Resources dwindle, mental health patients back up in ERs

Six mental health patients spent Labor Day weekend in Trident Medical Center's emergency department. As hospital staff struggled to funnel the patients into an overloaded and shrinking mental health care network, the patients filled nearly half of the available rooms.

According to Trident's protocol, four camera-equipped rooms are filled first, with a staff member constantly watching patients on a monitor nearby. Each patient beyond the fourth requires a sitter, and when a sixth patient accrues, a security guard must also stand duty.

Mental health patients are backing up in emergency rooms across the state, some waiting weeks for psychiatric beds to open or for arrangements to be made with outpatient facilities.

"We've always held patients at some point, but not to the extent we do now," said Mindi Huckabee, the hospital's director of emergency services. "In the past two to three years, it gets worse and worse and worse."

Now, a perfect storm is forming. State budget cuts are eating away at an already strained mental health care system. Compound that scenario with the holiday season and the economic crisis.

Read more in tomorrow's editions of The Post and Courier.