Mississippi city rejects mental health facility despite need

NATCHEZ -- Officials in southwest Mississippi have denied a rezoning request for a mental health facility, despite complaints that the area is underserved.

Natchez aldermen on Tuesday unanimously rejected rezoning property to allow a crisis stabilization unit, a small mental hospital meant to keep people from being sent to faraway state hospitals or jail.

Opponents said the facility is inappropriate for a mostly residential neighborhood.

Crisis stabilization services were one of the flash points in a recent trial in which a federal judge ruled Mississippi was violating the rights of mentally ill people by relying too much on state hospitals to confine them. Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten testified in that trial that Natchez and surrounding Adams County have few resources to help mentally ill people, saying he padded a jail cell to hold people. Patten testified that he rarely got help from Southwest Mississippi Mental Health because many of its employees were more than an hour away in McComb.

Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Executive Director Sherlene Vince told The Natchez Democrat that city documents improperly labeled the unit as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.

Read more: https://www.cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=76595
(Columbus Dispatch)