In a given year, one in four people will suffer a psychiatric crisis. It’s the third most common cause for hospitalizations, which can sometimes take hours or days to resolve. But a model based in Alameda County has cut that time by more than half, and the doctor behind that idea gave a presentation in Redding Thursday night.
Dr. Scott Zeller is the chief of psychiatric emergency services for the Alameda Health System at the John George Psychiatric Hospital in San Leandro. He says most patients with a psychiatric emergency will most likely call 911 and end up in an emergency room where they are not equipped to deal with those types of patients. They can wait up to 48 hours for a transfer to a facility that can help them, and they will most likely be in restraints while they wait. But in Alameda County, there is a dedicated emergency room where, unlike medical ERs, the staff is trained to deal with these types of emergencies.
“Once people get to us we have nurses and doctors who meet them at the door. They start evaluation immediately they start treatment as quickly as possible. We found the more quickly you start treatment, the better the chances somebody’s going to get much better and able to go back home in less than 24 hours.”
In a medical ER, Zeller says psychiatric patients can wait up to three times longer than other patients for treatment, and at a time when they are most vulnerable that does no one any good. In Shasta County, 12.6 percent of the population will need psychiatric care at one time or another.
Karen Hoyt is with Shasta Regional Medical Center, which sponsored the event. She says among seniors that number is about 11.5 percent. She says the hospital will be opening a general psych unit in the fall for those 55 and older.
“They have maybe onset dementia, and they are coping with issues. Or they broke their hip, they are depressed, they can’t get a handle on things.”
She says up to 40 percent of seniors who are hospitalized need some psychiatric help. And while this new center won’t help the population as a whole, it is a step in the right direction. Both Zeller and Hoyt stress that it will take a major change in thought processes to bring about change that is so desperately needed.