VENTURA : Work Begins on New Psychiatric Hospital

Armed with gold-colored shovels, four Ventura County supervisors joined about 100 mental health workers in a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of construction on a new psychiatric hospital in Ventura.

“It’s been a team effort that focuses on providing quality service,” said Randall Feltman, the Ventura County mental health director who has waited six years for the new $7.5-million hospital.

The 31,000-square-foot facility will be built next door to the Ventura County Medical Center at the northeast corner of Loma Vista Road and Hillmont Avenue.

The new 43-bed hospital will feature a full security system--an amenity now lacking at the squat building of 21,000 square feet and 30 beds that now serves as the county’s psychiatric hospital.

Feltman said that in the past 20 years, the number of patients in state hospitals has dropped from 26,000 to 1,400, even though the population has risen from 20 million to more than 32 million people. That sharp decrease has placed more demand on county mental health services, he said.

The new psychiatric hospital will enable health care professionals to better serve the growing number of seriously mentally ill patients in Ventura County.

“Some of these people are not just homeless, they’re so confused that they can’t get food and can’t get clothes for themselves,” Feltman said. “They’re dangerous to themselves and they’re dangerous to others.”

The county’s mental health department now serves about 1,600 patients a year, with an average stay of nine days, Feltman said. The extra beds will allow mental health officers to better prepare patients for out-patient services, he said.

Contractors plan to finish the single-story building by next April.