Report: Psychiatric center overcrowded

AUGUSTA – A report prepared for a legislative committee says Riverview Psychiatric Center remains overcrowded, with 85 percent of eligible patients being rejected for lack of space.

Critics warned when Riverview was being built that it was too small. There are 92 beds at the facility, but only 48 are general psychiatric beds.

The rest are designated for patients transferred from prisons and jails for treatment or evaluation and for those who were found not guilty of a crime because of mental illness. As of Thursday, there were five people on a waiting list for that unit, called the forensic unit.

“Access to Riverview is particularly difficult for inmates,” said Carol Carothers, executive director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill-Maine.

The comments came during a public hearing Thursday to review a report prepared for the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee,

David Proffitt, who runs the state psychiatric hospital in Augusta, said the bed crunch is not as acute in the regular section of the hospital.

But the forensic unit is crowded because of an increase in the number of jail and prison inmates undergoing assessments along with an increase in the numbers of people who are found “not criminally responsible” for their actions.

“I see the crisis in our jails,” said Sen. Elizabeth Mitchell, D-Vassalboro, Senate chairwoman of the committee. “Where is the urgency to deal with it?”

Ann Lang of Gardiner offered a personal view, saying her adult daughter was admitted July 30 to Spring Harbor with the idea that she would later go to Riverview. However, the parents were told to pick her up several days later.

“Five days later, she took a lot of pills and was back [at the Augusta hospital], and tried again to get into Riverview,” Lang said. “They said she didn’t qualify.”