Santa Barbara County’s Psych-Bed Pinch Tightens as Key Mental-Health Safety Valve Shuts Down

The Vista del Mar psychiatric hospital in Ventura will no longer be permitted to receive acute-care patients placed on involuntary holds, thus exacerbating Santa Barbara’s already pinched shortage of acute-care psychiatric beds. 

Of special concern for Santa Barbara mental-health providers will be the sudden loss of juvenile beds that Vista del Mar has long provided. No mental health facilities in Santa Barbara County offer involuntary acute-care treatment to juveniles; Vista del Mar was the only facility in Ventura County to do so. 

For years, Vista del Mar has provided Santa Barbara County mental-health professionals a desperately needed safety valve for those classified as a potential danger to themselves or others. On any given day last year, the county’s 16-bed Psychiatric Health Facility (also known as “the PHF”) was so overbooked that five county patients had to be farmed out to out-of-county facilities like Vista del Mar. 

Two weeks ago, Ventura County’s acting mental health czar issued a 22-count bill of particulars against Vista del Mar, charging that the facility was not operated safely enough to treat a “uniquely vulnerable” population and revoked the hospital’s permits to accept patients requiring involuntary treatment. Among the allegations were charges of patient-on-patient violence, a rape allegation by a patient that went uninvestigated, and patients being restrained without doctors’ orders. The most dramatic violation involved a client who, upon being released prematurely, is suspected of having dismembered his mother. 

Vista del Mar is still permitted to treat patients seeking voluntary care, but the involuntary treatment permit revocation will last until December 5. At that point, it’s expected that Ventura’s mental health chief will seek a permanent revocation.