This month Oregon State Hospital is marking the first anniversary of the opening of its Junction City campus. Since it opened in March 2015, the Junction City facility has served 166 people who needed hospital-level care to treat their mental illness, and discharged 88 back to their communities.
“OSH has given me an opportunity to get the things I need to recover from alcoholism and schizophrenia,” said one patient, who wishes to remain anonymous. “If I hadn’t come here, I might not have survived.”
Kerry Kelly, acting deputy superintendent for the Junction City Campus, said the staff there are dedicated to assisting and supporting patients on their individual paths of recovery.
“I am amazed and humbled by the high level of compassion, creativity and caring that staff show our clients and how they go above and beyond every day to ensure clients receive whatever they need,” Kelly said.
Joel Estrada, a mental health therapist, said the best part about the year has been seeing patients return to the community.
“The most meaningful thing about working here is seeing someone who couldn’t stand still for five minutes, then seeing them go out with a bright future, concrete thoughts, long-term goals and a promise to not come back,” Estrada said.
About Oregon State Hospital and the Junction City campus:
Oregon State Hospital, a division of the Oregon Health Authority, provides patient-centered psychiatric treatment for adults from throughout the state. The hospital's primary goal is to help people recover from their illness and return to their lives in the community. The hospital has campuses in Salem and Junction City.
With the capacity to serve up to 174 people, the Junction City campus treats people who have been civilly committed or who have committed a crime related to their mental illness*. Services include psychiatric evaluation, diagnosis and treatment, as well as community outreach and peer support.
Three of the Junction City campus’s six 25-bed units are currently operating, with plans to open a fourth unit in late spring. The hospital is currently hiring to staff the new unit; positions are posted on the Oregon Jobs website.
Oregon State Hospital celebrates first anniversary of Junction City campus
March 18, 2016
Submitted by Julie Ryder on Mon, 03/21/2016 - 23:50
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"OSH provides...psychiatric treatment for adults from throughout the state," with an admirable "primary goal," but apparently it applies only to those who "have been civilly comitted or who have committed a crime related to their mental illness." The OSH seems to exist to serve the courts, much to the exclusion of the medical/psychiatric community. Oregon law makes psychiatric committment very, very difficult for families dealing with severe mental illnesses (often untreated), and for psychiatric providers who would like to get help for clients before they commit crimes!
A "capacity to serve up to 174 people," (which is oddly 24 more than the total number of beds if all units were open), yet the number actually served in a whole year is 166! I was fortunate to have the opportunity to tour the Salem campus shortly after it was remodeled, and found entire units that had never been opened. The Junction City campus has only half of its units functioning. Yet in vast areas of Oregon (excluding Portland, Bend, and Medford, pretty much) there are very few options for inpatient psychiatric treatment. For example, in Klamath County (one of Oregon's largest, geographically) there are NO inpatient psychiatric beds. There is not even a county hospital.
I would like to see The Lund Report do an investigative, historical piece about the decline (and metropolizing) of availability of inpatient psychiatric care, including how many Oregon counties have no facilities available at all. I would like to understand how the Oregon State Hospital system came to focus almost exclusively on forensic psychiatry, making it unavailable even to indigent, poor, uninsured, and those covered by Medicaid (also a state health program) who have serious mental illnesses (regardless of legal charges), despite OSH increasing its capacity, modernizing facilities, and opening new ones, presumably funded by our tax dollars.
Julie Ryder