County Working On Mental Health Crisis Facility
Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
Bucks County is moving forward with plans to open a mental health facility to help those in crisis.
The facility will be for people who may have previously been sent to the county correctional facility and is designed to offer help instead of solely running a person through the courts system or waiting for a spot to open at a state facility.
The new center would work hand-in-hand with attorneys, public defenders, prosecutors, and police. A soon-to-be-implemented mental health court will also work with the facility.
Bucks County Commissioner Chairperson Diane Ellis-Marseglia announced the news during last week’s State of the County address hosted by the Lower Bucks County Chamber of Commerce.
A 24-year-old Bristol Township man with a history of mental illness will stand trial for allegedly causing thousands of dollars in damages at a Bristol Township hospital and threatening to infect security guards after he tested positive for COVID-19 last year.
Dudly Ulysse, who has paranoid schizophrenia, had spent 14 days at the Lower Bucks Hospital mental crisis center waiting for a psychiatric hospital to accept him as an involuntary commitment when the alleged violent outburst happened last July.
Following a hearing Wednesday, Bristol Township District Judge Kevin Wagner held Ulysse on the original charges, which include multiple felony counts of aggravated assault and risking a catastrophe, as well as newly added ones.
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In a series of letters to various publications, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Teresa Miller expressed her appreciation for the frontline heroes who work for the Department of Human Services and care for vulnerable populations throughout the commonwealth.
She acknowledged the employees at South Mountain Restoration Center and South Mountain Secure Treatment Unit in Franklin County, Loysville Youth Development Center in Perry County, Youth Forestry Camp No. 3 in Trough Creek State Park in Huntingdon County, Norristown State Hospital in Montgomery County, Wernersville State Hospital in Berks County, Ebensburg State Center in Cambria County and Torrance State Hospital in Derry Township, all of which are staffed by remarkable and dedicated AFSCME-represented employees.
State nurses are calling on the commonwealth to rebuild the public health system with better staffing and funding in order to address dire circumstances they say have heavily affected patient care, not only during the pandemic, but for decades prior.
Nurses with the Pennsylvania departments of Health, Corrections and Human Services came together Thursday to call attention to challenges that have made their occupations, and those of thousands of individuals throughout Pennsylvania, all that much more difficult, especially in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic.
Even before the coronavirus, continuous budget cuts across the commonwealth left the departments with staffing issues and poor recruitment and retention rates, resulting in a situation where nurses struggle to care for their patients, they said.