Opportunity lost

Crisis unit will one day be missed

For some, the announcement that the Northwest Arkansas Crisis Stabilization Unit will be permanently closed might just sound like another failed government program. Big whoop, right? But the reality is its failure is a crushing loss of opportunity to address mental health in the region.

When Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the Legislature created a $5 million pilot program of four crisis stabilization units in 2019, the now-former governor hoped it was just the beginning of an approach to keep people suffering a mental health crisis out of jails. Jails can warehouse people, but they’re not equipped to adequately treat people whose mental crisis is the primary contributor to their interactions with law enforcement.

Three of the CSUs — in Little Rock, Jonesboro and Fort Smith — are thriving. This is the Northwest Arkansas unit’s second closure. Both came when the medical care provider contracted to run it declared an inability to make the financials work, largely because of lack of demand. The number of patients referred to the Fayetteville-based unit never came close to rivaling the numbers of the other three.

Why might that be? Is Northwest Arkansas just a land of milk and honey where mental health challenges afflict far fewer people than in the other locales? If only we could be so lucky, but relying on that as an explanation simply ignores reality.

People in crisis exist in Northwest Arkansas and the region could benefit from a robust stabilization unit. But while the CSU had its supporters, it never attracted someone of influence to be its champion. And people who could have directed people in need to the services provided at the CSU never bought into it. Why? It’s perplexing. Some said the distance to Fayetteville from other locales was too great. It never got a foothold on referrals from hospitals and clinics, either. It wasn’t that the CSU wasn’t needed; it seems a lot of folks who could have treated it as a valuable resource just never got around to bothering with it.

When the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences took over the medical contract with Washington County, which administers the CSU, it injected new hope for its future. But it was short-lived. State officials can hardly be blamed for looking at the paltry usage numbers and evaluating the CSU as a failure.

The result is Northwest Arkansas, with its growing population and need for mental health services, will sadly lose a resource that it will, in our estimation, wish it had back a few years from now. It’s a resource that, because the region let it fizzle, will prove that much more difficult to restore.