LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Muri Stein Hospital is one of two forensic mental health facilities in Nevada.
It is designated to treat inmates who are deemed incompetent by the court. Earlier this month FOX5 brought you a special report, digging into why inmates who are deemed incompetent are left in their jail cells for months without treatment as they wait to be transported to Stein.
We told you that there were 114 inmates waiting to be transported to Stein. The average wait time to get in was 123 days. Clinical program manager Ellen Richardson-Adams showed FOX5 around their campus.
“We approach their psychiatric stabilization with a holistic concept,” Richardson-Adams said.
Those who are in Stein are often tasked with many activities that help them restore competency. Their day is busy, with beneficial art work, recreation or even learning basic hygiene.
The activities are done at certain times of the day.
“It helps to structure, which helps to reorganize the brain, which helps their progress towards their restoration,” Richardson-Adams said.
FOX5 was able to see the rooms and learned that every piece of furniture is made so that it cannot be broken or harmful to the patients. However, as soon as one patient is discharged, another patient is waiting to be admitted.
Jails are often not equipped to force medication, but inside Stein, they are, and at rare times with extreme measures such as restraining the patients. It is a process that is called “Denial of rights.”
“If it comes to a point where it’s become harmful to themselves, then there is a process that we go through, 13-page packet, requests, there’s psychiatric and clinical notes and then there could be a force of medication,” Richardson-Adams said.
If a patient is having a hard day, they could be put in a secluded room and checked on every 15 minutes, but never longer than four hours in there. The average stay inside the forensic hospital is 96 days.
The Division of Public and Behavioral Health tells FOX5 they do plan on building a 300-bed facility, but there is no word on when that would be completed.
Another issue they say they are facing is hiring staff equipped to handle forensic patients.
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