Published: August 08, 2008 10:18 am            

Pecan Valley a buffer for patients

MHMR better option than hospitals, jails

Editor’s note: This is the final in a six-part series on local resources dealing with mental illness and retardation.



Phil Riddle

editor@weatherforddemocrat.com

Like many valuable healthcare resources, Pecan Valley Mental Health Mental Retardation center is one most hope they never need.

But for clients of the regional MHMR, services they get there may mean the difference between timely, appropriate treatment and unnecessary institutionalization.

Coke Beatty, Pecan Valley MHMR executive director, says one of the agency’s main functions is to serve as an alternative to institutional care.

Pecan Valley serves a 4,000 square-mile chunk of North Texas with a dozen group homes and 16 foster homes as a buffer between incarceration or hospitalization and viable treatment options for clients in crisis.

“If it weren’t for these homes,” Beatty said, “they would be in state schools.”

Pecan Valley board member Elizabeth Lawrence said the agency serves a vital, albeit largely unknown role.

“It’s a safety net for families,” she said in a recent presentation. “Were it not there ... Communities are needed to help deal with these problems, to keep people with mental health issues off the streets and out of the criminal justice system.”

Chief Executive Officer of the Texas Council of Community Mental Health and Mental Retardation Centers, Inc., Danette Castle echoes Lawrence’s assessment.

“One of our main purposes is to divert people out of jails and out of emergency rooms,” she said.

Beatty said professionals from his office are called to jails and hospitals regularly to help assess individuals’ mental health in order to dispense appropriate treatment.

Urgent cases may now call on Pecan Valley’s Mobile Crisis Outreach Team, which was formed in March to allow mental health providers to go to patients, rather than make provisions for patients to come into the local office for assessment.

Prior to the formation of the mobile teams, intervention took days and sometimes weeks. Now, Pecan Valley has a licensed counselor on call and a psychiatrist a phone call away, 24 hours a day to get proper treatment to mental health patients.

The unit allows follow-up care in the community, as well as stabilization of psychiatric emergencies.

County Judge Mark Riley recently commented on issue resolution and patient advocacy, what he considers strengths of the local center.

“This is my third term working with MHMR,” Riley said. “I’ve seen it grow and evolve and change, all for the better.”

Riley added the relationship between the agency, police and the Sheriff’s office is a strong one.

“Local law enforcement has had to make some changes, as well, as the program has progressed,” Riley said. “But the staff [at Pecan Valley] has done a good job to facilitate and make things happen in the system. In my mental competency court, we’ve had kids age 11 up to adults. It’s not an easy deal. The staff here is to be commended.”

        

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