ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A multi-million dollar challenge at our state’s largest mental health facility is selecting up velocity.

Developers are finalizing their plans for a brand new forensics unit on the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute. That’s the so-called mental health hospital in Las Vegas.

Officials say the brand new unit shall be bigger and embrace new sources for sufferers. But it’s going to nonetheless solely serve a particular goal in New Mexico’s behavioral health system.

“In order for any behavioral health system to work, you need all components to work,” stated Tim Shields, a New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute hospital administrator. 

That contains the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute. It’s a facility reserved for essentially the most extreme – and typically harmful – mental health sufferers in New Mexico.

“If we can’t do that, and these individuals are at lower levels of care, it sort of destroys those levels of care. So what we need to do to address the entire behavioral health system is we need to do our job, which is that higher level of care,” stated Shields. 

But Shields says that larger degree of care has its limitations contained in the institute’s 50-year-old residence simply outdoors Las Vegas.

“It doesn’t meet the requirements for behavioral health facility, including some risks for self harm, and things like that. That wouldn’t be allowed in a facility built today, and it’s not even ADA accessible,” Shields stated. 

But these points will quickly be up to now. State leaders are finalizing design plans on a $140 million substitute facility which can embrace extra examination rooms, group remedy areas, and different required facilities.

Shields says the brand new forensics unit will nonetheless have round 90 beds, however the upgrades will enable them to fill extra of them at one time.

“We’re not trying to run it at 100% occupancy, but it will allow us the ability to do so,” stated Shields. 

New Mexico state legislation says sufferers – and suspects – referred to the facility have to be handled inside 30 days.

Shields says they already do this, however a modernized facility will assist sustain with elevated demand.

“We’re seeing a pretty significant increase in the forensic referral population, so we’re trying to also be prepared to be able to manage that higher referral base,” Shields stated. 

State officers say building on the brand new facility ought to start in October, and it might be prepared for sufferers in 2027. Hopefully relieving stress on different behavioral health amenities.

“If we don’t do that high end well, and take care of that, then it sort of crushes all of the lower levels of care that we’re hoping to build,” stated Shields. 

Shields identified the present facility was in-built 1972 by the Department of Corrections and was by no means actually designed to deal with mental health sufferers, but it surely’s taken about 10 years to get this new facility off the bottom.