Ventura County is moving to beef up its mental health services. The county is going to add ten nurses as part of efforts to expand its Hillmont Inpatient Psychiatric Unit from 30 to 36 beds.
The expansion is intended to provide more capacity to help those in crisis in the county. Limited space has meant that some people had to be treated out of county. There is a statewide shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds, with the total number available decreasing by nearly 30% in the last two decades.
The expansion came out of recommendations made by a mental health task force set up in the wake of the Borderline Bar and Grill rampage in November of 2018, which left 12 people dead in Thousand Oaks.
