Long Beach has approved the city’s first ’round-the-clock psychiatric urgent care center, a facility advocates say will provide necessary social services and offer an alternative to incarceration or treatment in hospital emergency rooms where waits can be long and beds are often too few.

Stars Behavioral Health Group, headquartered in Long Beach, will run the operation on contract with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, which operates five similar facilities across the county and plans to open four more this year.

Once up and running, the Wrigley-area office will house two separate components: a 24-hour mental health urgent care facility capable of admitting up to 12 adults and six adolescents, ages 13 to 17; and a crisis walk-in center, which would be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. It will replace a current medical office building at the corner of Long Beach Boulevard and East 32nd Street.

Company President Kent Dunlap pointed to a growing movement to create short-term crisis stabilization centers, which, he said, are quickly becoming a best practice for public agencies.

“This is something sweeping the nation,” he said.

The centers lighten the burden on law enforcement, reduce rates of incarceration and hospitalization, and connect patients to treatment when they need it, he explained, pointing to results seen at the company’s other mental health units in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

And when it comes to the public system, Long Beach Health and Human Services Director Kelly Colopy said it can take two to three weeks before prospective patients can be seen, and sometimes the wait is even longer.

“If you’re in a crisis, that’s too late,” she said.

‘Right thing to do’

In a lengthy public hearing on Tuesday, dozens of mental-health advocates pleaded with elected officials to reject appeals that aimed to halt approval of the facility. Though none of the appellants were opposed to a mental health urgent care center, neighbors did not want to see it in their backyards.

Many were concerned about community safety, and what they called a proliferation of social service providers in the area, located in the 7th District.

On the other hand, those advocating for the facility said that way of thinking only furthers social stigmas tied to mental illness.

Among them was Kathy Parsons, a retired city official who, for the first time, admitted publicly that she has struggled with mental illness for the past 40 years.

“If you don’t have the support you need to move through this devastating illness, it’s heartbreaking,” she said.

Statistics show one in five American adults will face a mental-health crisis at some point in their lives, according to recent figures released by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Through tears, Councilwoman Jeannine Pearce also shared a piece of her personal history, which involved losing immediate family members to murder and suicide, traumatic incidents she said led to a lifelong struggle with mental illness.

“Mental health is something that we don’t talk about like we talk about cancer or anything else,” she said, “and because of that, it is that much harder for ourselves, our co-workers and family members to find resources.”

The City Council voted unanimously to reject appeals and approve a conditional use permit with about three dozen conditions, including requirements for 24-hour security personnel, both inside and outside, and a 24-hour hotline for neighbors to report suspicious persons, among other elements.

Councilman Roberto Uranga, who represents the district on which the center will be built, added a few conditions on Tuesday, including one that would allow the city to revisit the operation in one year to ensure the operator is abiding by all conditions.

“One thing I can’t stand is when I have a bad operator,” he said, referencing a recent city decision to revoke business licenses and a conditional use permit of a neighborhood bar that received numerous complaints and calls for service.

“It’s important the residents know we are very concerned for their safety and welfare,” he said.

That being said, Uranga said, approving the center was “the right thing to do.”

Closing the gap

Once built and open to the public, the Behavioral Health Urgent Care Center will be an outpatient facility where voluntary and involuntary patients can be admitted for just under 24 hours, until their crisis is stabilized, allowing exceptions for patients whose time would expire during the late evening hours. Dunlap estimates staff could see around 30 patients per day or 900 each month, who would likely be brought to the facility by a friend, family member or law enforcement. He said dedicated crisis services should help close the gap between inpatient psychiatric treatment and outpatient care.

“To qualify for psychiatric hospitalization you have to be having pretty severe symptoms and be at high level of risk,” he explained. “This is an opportunity for individuals who have not progressed to that level of acuity to get early on services to avoid a higher level crisis.”

Hospital emergency rooms are not really designed for psychiatric treatment, which, he said, often pulls staff resources away from other medical needs.

Colopy said the Long Beach Health Department does not provide direct mental-health services, though the Multi-Service Center, considered a “one-stop shop” that offers a wide spectrum of social services, does often refer those in need to various providers across the city.

Currently, law enforcement responds to calls for mental crises, including police, fire and paramedics.

When law enforcement receives a call for service involving mental illness, the Long Beach Police Department deploys a Mental Evaluation Team, which consists of one sworn police officer paired with a county mental-health clinician; Long Beach has six such teams.

After evaluation, MET teams have a few options, depending on whether the individual is violent or not, and if the person is interested in receiving treatment. Last year, Long Beach MET teams responded to approximately 2,200 calls for service, Colopy said.

But each of those calls had the potential to take an officer off the streets for up to six hours at a time, she said, explaining that when an officer transports a patient to an emergency room for treatment, the officer is required to stay with the patient until admitted. If there are no beds available in the few Long Beach hospitals that have inpatient units, they may have to drive to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and wait there.

“All of that is very time-consuming,” Dunlap said. “These facilities are designed so they can much more rapidly bring a client to us, wait 15 minutes for assessment, and then be on their way.”

If all goes according to plan, he said, a grand opening will likely occur later this year or in early 2018.