Money committees add money to mental health emergency clinic budget

"It's irresponsible to build the psychiatric emergency services unit and then mothball it," Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said in urging the subcommittee to fund the unit so that it can open at the end of this year.

That would coincide with the completion of that unit in Sparks scheduled for October.

And Raggio said the money can come from the increase the Economic Forum is expected to project for state revenues when it meets later this month.

"This should be a high priority on that list so I would move to add it," he said.

Other members of the subcommittee headed by Assemblywoman Jan Evans, D-Sparks, voted to increase the Mental Health-Mental Hygiene budget $533,143 this coming fiscal year and $752,080 the next to allow the unit to open.

The Psychiatric Emergency Services unit is a 10-bed facility being constructed in an existing building at the Nevada Mental Health Institute in Sparks. The purpose of the unit is to provide an emergency facility for mental health patients to divert some of them from being readmitted to state mental health facilities for a longer period of time.

A similar facility is already operating in southern Nevada.

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