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Humboldt County will soon have a new resource in its efforts to help people suffering from acute mental health issues. Opening later this summer, the Hyperion Crisis Residential Treatment Facility, located at 528 N Street in Eureka, will offer ‘round-the-clock care for people who might otherwise be sent to the Sempervirens Psychiatric Hospital or left to fend for themselves at home or on the street.

“This facility will not only improve a long-blighted site in the neighborhood, but will provide a safe location so people can stabilize and get connected to necessary medical treatment,” Fourth District Humboldt County Supervisor Natalie Arroyo told the Outpost via email.

With initial funding coming via a $2 million in state financing, the facility will offer patients room, board and a variety of services, including psychiatric care, case management, access to housing resources and more, all billable through Medi-Cal. 

Jack Breazeal, deputy director for behavioral health with the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), said that many of the folks who wind up in Sempervirens (aka SV) arrive in a state of grave disability or destitution, “meaning they’re up there because they kind of lost their ability to take care of themselves and meet their basic needs.”

Many of these people are homeless and suffer from substance use disorder alongside their mental health issues. “I mean, it is not a good spot,” Breazeal said. “So to think that SV is going to fix everything in their life in a few days is not reasonable.” 

At the crisis residential treatment facility, people will be able to stay for up to 45 days, with the average stay at similar facilities across the state lasting about two weeks. It will be an outpatient facility, meaning people can leave whenever they choose, but those who stay will be assigned a case manager, a therapist and psychiatrist, and they’ll be linked up with other outpatient services. 

Housed in a renovated duplex, the facility has a capacity of 10 patients at a time, with five double-occupancy bedrooms. The county has contracted the Yuba-City-based nonprofit Willow Glen Care Center to operate the center with its own staff of nurses, case managers and mental health workers. Willow Glen already operates such crisis care centers in more than half a dozen Northern California locations.

“I appreciate that Willow Glen staff will provide 24-hour-a-day staffing to support people staying at the site as well as the community that surrounds the home,” Arroyo said. “I’m very grateful to the funders and partners in this effort!”

Breazeal elaborated about who will most benefit from this new facility and the services it offers. Some patients will be those who’ve recently been released from Sempervirens but who may worry that without more help they’ll decompensate and sink quickly back into the thoughts and behaviors that got them hospitalized in the first place. 

Others might be people who, say, wind up in a local emergency room in distress but who, after evaluation, don’t quite meet the criteria for a mandatory 5150 psychiatric hold. Hospital employees or other health care professionals can recommend a stay at Hyperion, which may help prevent the need for acute hospitalization.

Meanwhile, Sempervirens’ 16 beds are often fully occupied, and Breazeal said his grand hope is that the new Hyperion center will relieve some of that pressure. 

“I really am excited about that,” he said. “That’s what’s going to end up happening.”

A substantial subset of people who wind up at Sempervirens are under the legal guardianship of the county, conserved per the terms of the Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act. These people are sometimes held as SV because the county has not managed to find an available long-term care placement. Once Hyperion opens, some such patients can stay there while they wait, according to Breazeal.

The big benefit to this facility, he added, will be the ability to ensure that residents are taking their medications as prescribed.

“That’s where we generally lose people, is on that med compliance,” Breazeal said. “In this place we will get at least 14 days of ongoing medication into your system and get you a rhythm of taking them and making sure that you have a case manager [who will] take you to the pharmacy and get your meds and then take you back to your residence.”

Residents will also be able to get checkups and other appointments through Open Door Community Health Centers.

Care provided at the facility will be covered by Medi-Cal reimbursements and the Mental Health Services Act, a tax on millionaires passed by California voters in 2004.

The county is hoping to open the Hyperion Crisis Residential Treatment Facility by Aug. 1.

“I am very hopeful about its impact on the community, both at our level with Sempervirens, with the local emergency rooms, and then the community at large,” Breazeal said, “just really clearing up some congestion and getting people the help they need.”