A multimillion-dollar project at the state’s largest mental health facility is accelerating.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A multi-million dollar project at the state’s largest mental health facility is gaining speed.
Developers are finalizing plans to create a new forensics department at the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute. It’s a so-called mental hospital in Las Vegas.
Officials say the new unit will be larger and include new resources for patients. But it would still only serve certain purposes in New Mexico’s behavioral health system.
“For a behavioral health system to work, all the components have to work,” said Tim Shields, hospital administrator for the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute.
That includes the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute. This is a facility reserved for New Mexico’s most seriously and sometimes dangerously mentally ill patients.
“If we can’t do that and the level of care for these people is low, that level of care is in some ways destroyed. So what we have to do to address the entire behavioral health system is We need to do our jobs, which means we need to provide a higher level of care,” Shields said.
But Shields says the institute’s 50-year-old home on the outskirts of Las Vegas limits the ability to provide more advanced care.
“It doesn’t meet the requirements of a behavioral health facility, including the risk of self-harm,” Shields said. “That wouldn’t be allowed in a facility built today, and it wouldn’t be ADA accessible.”
But those problems will soon be a thing of the past. State leaders are finalizing design plans for a $140 million replacement facility with more exam rooms, group treatment areas and other needed equipment.
The new forensics department still has about 90 beds, but the upgrades will allow it to fill more beds at once, Shields said.
“We’re not trying to run it at 100% capacity, but it will be possible,” Shields said.
New Mexico law requires patients and suspects referred to the facility to receive treatment within 30 days.
Shields says it’s already doing that, but the modernized facility will help meet the increased demand.
“The forensic referral population is increasing significantly, so we’re trying to be better equipped to manage a larger referral base,” Shields said.
State officials say construction on the new facility could begin in October and be ready for patients in 2027. The hope is that it will ease pressure on other behavioral health facilities.
“If we don’t get the high-end services right and we don’t take care of them, we’re going to undermine all the lower levels of care that we’re trying to build,” Shields said.
Shields said the current facility was built by the Department of Corrections in 1972 and was not actually designed to treat mentally ill patients, but it took about a decade for the new facility to get off the ground. He pointed out.
