A program designed to offer immediate care to adolescents in crisis at Juneau’s city-owned hospital closed earlier this month after opening eight months ago.
In an interview, Bartlett Regional Hospital spokesperson Erin Hardin said the closure is due to a lack of funding and staff.
“There is no dedicated subsidy funding available, and we don’t have the staff to keep the unit open,” she said. “So knowing both of those factors, the decision was made to close that particular program.”
This comes as the hospital faces a major budget crisis. Its board of directors is seeking financial help for a handful of services it says are draining money. The crisis stabilization service was one of those programs and was expected to lose $1.2 million next year.
The hospital only started offering the service last December after the new Aurora Behavioral Health Center was completed. It was built specifically to house the program and the hospital’s psychiatric services program.
At the time of its opening, the crisis stabilization unit was seen as a groundbreaking service to help youth in Juneau — and across Southeast Alaska — get the mental health and substance use care they need.
According to data from the state, suicide was the leading cause of death for Alaska Native youth aged 10 to 19 and all youth aged 10 to 14 in 2020. It was the second leading cause of death that year for Alaskans aged 15 to 34.
Aaron Surma, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Juneau, said that the demand for crisis services in Juneau is high, and the closure will be devastating for the people who need it the most.
“People aren’t going to get what they need — and that has all kinds of negative reverberations. And I think you can draw some easy parallels to some other tragedies that have happened in our community,” he said. “So people are going to struggle more, and it’s very hard to live in crisis and be successful.”
Surma said that, in the absence of adequate crisis care services in Juneau, it’s vital that people learn how to support one another’s mental health.
“I want and hope to help people become more comfortable supporting one another’s mental health because I think individuals can be more reliable than systems and services,” he said.
Hardin said people in crisis can still receive care at Bartlett. But they will get it from the hospital’s emergency department rather than the crisis center. She said the hospital’s board continues to look for other more financially sustainable ways to offer crisis care in the future.
The Aurora building will continue to remain open and house outpatient psychiatric services. Hardin said the portion of the building that housed the crisis program will likely be repurposed for other hospital programs.
