The state Department of Health opened a new Behavioral Health Crisis Center in Iwilei to help those having a mental health crisis.
The center is meant to treat people instead of sending them to a hospital emergency room or into the criminal justice system.
The state is leasing the Iwilei Resource Center from the city for the next year and will have the option to renew it later.
Gov. Josh Green explained that the center is another tool the state can use to help people.
“We have to have a different approach to complement, to work with the traditional health care system because those who suffer and struggle on our streets day in and day out cannot be forgotten,” he said. “They must be helped.”
To start, the crisis center will have about eight seats and will provide services to people for up to 24 hours. With time, the center will eventually be able to assist 16 people.
After the initial treatment, crisis center staff will decide where patients need to go whether that means being discharged to a caseworker or to one of the nine stabilization beds, where people can stay for up to 12 days.
Dr. Chad Koyanagi, the Department of Health’s medical director for crisis continuum, led the project.
“A lot of the folks who will benefit from coming to this facility, they've had more than their share of life adversities,” he said.
“A lot of times they've had difficulties finding the right providers who understood what they needed or connected to them the right way, and sometimes traditional arenas for people to get care are not the best for these people. A place like this is intentional in trauma-informed care.”
For now, the center will be handling suicidal patients, especially people who call the 988-CARES hotline.
Several measures going through the state legislature would expand the types of patients that the behavioral health crisis center can accept, and provide funds to open another.
