Vol. 18 No. 4 December 2004

Dear Reader,

This issue of News Digest focuses on Bridges Treatment Center. We are fortunate to have such a warm and nurturing therapeutic environment to help children ages 6 through 17 who have emotional and behavioral problems.

However, I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the continuing struggle to care for acute psychiatric adult patients whose needs are not being met as the state closes psychiatric beds and "reinvests" these patients in local communities. We are beginning to have meaningful dialogue about this situation with the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services. However, we have not seen any definitive action to alleviate the problem.

The greatest problem is the lack of adequate funding allocated to the mental health system to cover the cost to care for these patients. No one can argue that it is not in everyone's best interest to return patients to their communities. However, Virginia is at the bottom for funding mental health care, ranking 47th among the 50 states.

Without adequate resources to manage these patients, they end up in emergency departments and subsequently overwhelm the private sector's inpatient units. The 25-bed adult unit at Virginia Baptist Hospital is at capacity most of the time, forcing us to seek beds in other hospitals, most of which have none available. The patients then are placed on medical surgical units or boarded in our emergency department, which is not only counter therapeutic and disruptive, but far short of ideal.

Another result of the state's "reinvestment" in Lynchburg is a 42 percent increase in homeless people, many of whom are patients who were released from state psychiatric hospitals.

The system is broken. To get us through this crisis, the state needs to make more beds available in the state hospitals until it can provide adequate funding to care for these patients in the community.

Bill Semones
Vice President

Meeting growing demand
Bridges Treatment Center expands

Age-specific programming
Cottage addresses needs of young children
Frank Selden, Ph.D., Psychologist, Piedmont Psychiatric Center

To determine treatment
Multidisciplinary team assesses each child's strengths, weaknesses
John Hendrickson, M.D., Medical Director, Bridges Treatment Center

Therapeutic value of a dress code
Bill Gorman, Director, Bridges Treatment Center







Pediatric specialty clinics at Virginia Baptist Hospital
Tiffany Kidd, R.N.C., Clinical Nurse IV, Pediatrics