Hospital emergency rooms across the state struggle with providing care for people with mental health and substance use problems. The Sun reported in 2018 that the problem has been brewing for decades, as the state closed many of its public mental health facilities in an effort to deinstitutionalize care. The number of state-run psychiatric beds has dropped by nearly 80 percent since the 1980s, and emergency rooms are charged with stabilizing mental health patients before handing them off to community-based treatment.