Georgia moving fast on new state mental health facility

The General Assembly appropriated $409 million for the facility in the fiscal year 2027 budget. The patients will be inmates with mental illnesses or disabilities convicted of or facing criminal charges, according to Tanner. 

Nearly 800 individuals were housed in jails waiting for court-ordered mental health services, known as forensic services, according to information in a Feb. 26 release from the department. The state had 670 beds for individuals who are either incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of insanity, the department said. 

"The last mental hospital the state built was in the 1960s," Tanner told the House Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Community Health and Healthcare Oversight. "Georgia had a little over 4 million people in the 1960s. We have close to 12 million Georgians today. A certain percentage of the population is going to have serious, persistent mental illness and we're going to need to be able to take care of those individuals."

The department's Operation New Hope is also providing forensic services, according to Tanner. The state allocated $3.2 million for the program in fiscal year 2025, according to the department.

"We recognize that we have people in the state hospital who have been there for a long time, who our doctors believe are clinically ready to get out but the court's reluctant for them to be released," Tanner said. "They move into a facility that looks more like a home than a hospital, but it's still on our campus."

Operation New Hope offers GED training and job skills, according to Tanner.

"Some of these individuals don't know how to wash clothes, they don't know how to balance a checkbook," Tanner said. "We teach them those skills and then they're allowed to go out and get a job if they're capable of doing that, and ultimately, the goal is they can step down into a community-based program."

Georgia shuttered two psychiatric inpatient facilities and moved services to community-based care and crisis services after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice over patient care at the hospitals led to a settlement in 2010. U.S. District Court Judge Eleanor L. Ross released the state from 60 provisions of a settlement with the Justice Department in February and ended federal monitoring requirements with one caveat, according to a release from the department. 

The state must house 521 individuals and 404 must receive housing vouchers. The remaining individuals will receive supportive housing services. 

"You all funded those 404 housing vouchers and I'm happy to tell you that before the end of this year, when we will have the DOJ monitor back on site, and we will have met that condition and the entire behavioral side of the settlement agreement will be over," Tanner said. 

The department still has work to do to address services for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, but "we're making a tremendous amount of progress in that area," Tanner said.