Readers Want Long-Term Mental Hospitals Back. Here Is What the Law Allows.

- Advertisement -

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio. A clear majority of readers who answered a recent Hopewell Heritage Headlines poll said Ohio should bring back long-term mental hospitals. About 92 percent voted yes. About 8 percent voted no.

The poll is not a scientific sample of Ross or Pickaway County, it is a small reader vote. The comments behind it are not small. Families, neighbors, and officers keep describing the same pattern. A crisis, a cruiser, a short hold, a release, then another call.

Ohio law does not currently allow a long-term hospital placement just because that pattern is obvious.

What the law allows now

Civil commitment sits in Ohio Revised Code Chapter 5122. A person can be ordered into treatment only if a court finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that the person has a mental illness and meets a legal test. Those tests include a substantial risk of physical harm to self or others, or an inability to meet basic physical needs because of the illness when no community placement is immediately available.

A separate “revolving door” test covers someone unlikely to survive safely without supervision who has repeatedly gone off treatment and landed back in a hospital or a jail mental health unit. Under the statute, a person who meets only that test is not subject to hospitalization. The tool in that case is outpatient commitment, not a state hospital bed.

Police, sheriffs, and certain clinicians can take a person to a hospital for an emergency exam under ORC 5122.10 if they have reason to believe the person is a risk to self or others. Staff must examine the person within 24 hours. The hospital can then hold the person for no more than three court days, unless the person signs in voluntarily or someone files an affidavit in probate court.

Any person can file that affidavit under ORC 5122.11, on reliable information or actual knowledge. The probate court decides whether there is probable cause. If a full hearing finds the standard met, the first order cannot exceed 90 days, and the court must use the least restrictive setting that still meets the treatment goal. A hospital bed is legal only if the court says inpatient care is that least restrictive option. Continued commitment can run up to two years, but only after another hearing. Those hearings are mandatory.

None of that is a sentence, and none of it is permanent.

Where the beds are

Ohio runs six regional psychiatric hospitals. The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services puts the system at 1,133 beds, typically about 96 percent full. In November 2024, Governor Mike DeWine’s office said those hospitals were at 96 percent capacity and that the patients were almost entirely people sent from the criminal courts: jail transfers, people being restored to competency, and people found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Civil patients, the people with no criminal case, are screened by local Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health boards and admitted only if a bed is open and the person is medically appropriate. In this region, that board is the Paint Valley ADAMH Board, which covers Ross, Pickaway, Pike, Highland, and Fayette counties. The state hospital for much of southern Ohio is Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare in Athens.

The state has added capacity, not a new long-term system. A Columbus replacement opened in 2024 with 30 added beds. The capital budget set aside $10 million to design a Miami Valley hospital that would add more than 200 beds. State officials have said those beds are years away.

What it would take

A reader poll cannot open a ward. Longer mandatory stays, or a return to hospitals meant for months and years rather than a 90-day order, would take a change in state law, a budget for beds and staff, and a plan for the court hearings the Constitution requires. That work sits with the General Assembly, the governor, and OhioMHAS. County commissioners and the ADAMH board control local crisis contracts, not the state hospital census.

Residents who want that fight on the record can do three things. Ask state representatives and senators, in writing, whether they will sponsor or support a bill that adds civil beds and lengthens the commitment standard. Ask the Paint Valley ADAMH Board, at its public meetings, how many local people are waiting on a state bed and what happens when none is open. And in an individual crisis, use the door the law already has: 988, the county crisis line, or a probate court affidavit if the legal test can be met.

Ross County crisis: (740) 773-4357. Pickaway County crisis: (740) 477-2579. Paint Valley ADAMH: (740) 773-2283.

Heritage Headlines will keep reporting the local cases that feed this question. The law, as written, still treats a long hospital stay as the exception, not the default.

- Advertisement -

Send a tip or correction to info@heritageheadlines.com, or use the contact page.