ORANGE, Calif. — Marshall Moncrief is the CEO of Mind OC, the engine that runs Be Well Orange County, which cut the virtual ribbon to its new, 60,000 square-foot mental health and wellness campus in Orange in the second week of January.
"Everything from crisis stabilization-type services to longer term residential stays. The goal of this campus is to be available to the Orange County community," Moncrief said.
The site is going to provide urgent care for mental health and substance use, something that Moncrief says is a significant step forward in treating mental crises.
“These illnesses many times have crisis moments and so acute states, just like a diabetic or congestive heart failure. Acute states of the illness are common, and we need to have a system of care in place to deal with those acute states,” Moncrief says.
Every year in Orange County there are approximately 50,000 emergency department visits for mental health and substance use issues even though the emergency room might not be the right place for the vast majority of those visits.
San Clemente resident Christy Weissman has four kids, and her oldest son lives with a serious mental illness. He’s been hospitalized 18 times in the last six years along with failed placement attempts at other facilities and has experienced chronic homelessness.
“When we know that he’s going to need some sort of care but it’s not at an escalated emergency level, type of situation yet, I’m calling around different places and kind of explain to them my story and then I would hear all the time, ‘It sounds like he needs a higher level of care than we can provide,’” Weissman said.
It’s those gaps in mental health and substance use care that Be Well is hoping to fill.
Lake Forest resident Steve Pitman saw his older brother, who he says did everything the right growing up, change right in front of his eyes and end up struggling with mental illness for five decades before he died. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five U.S. adults lives with a mental illness.
With 93 beds and seven different services, the facility expects to treat thousands of people in a year… and is open to anyone regardless of insurance.
“Usually they have to degrade to the point that it’s just perfectly obvious that they can’t manage themselves or that they’re a danger to themselves or others before the system was willing to do anything. And I can remember asking them, ‘How badly does he have to damage himself before someone will help him?’” Pitman said.
The campus was a $40 million project with $16.6 million committed by the Board of Supervisors for its development and additional investments from CalOptima, Kaiser Permanente, Hoag Presbyterian and others.
And while he says the building is just the first step, Moncrief hopes this public-private partnership will be a turning point for the county.
“If we can do this together, if we can build a building together, then there really isn’t anything we can’t do together,” Moncrief said.