Arizona is facing, and has faced for a long time, a major gap in our mental health care system: the lack of Secure Behavioral Health Residential Facilities (SBHRFs) for individuals with serious mental illness resistant to treatment.
These are often folks with conditions like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who, due to the nature of their illness, are unwilling to engage in voluntary treatment. Their families are left watching loved one’s cycle through emergency rooms, jails, and homelessness—without access to the long-term, structured care they need.
In 2019, families and advocates achieved a significant milestone when legislation was passed to authorize SBHRFs in Arizona. These facilities would offer a secure, therapeutic environment where individuals with SMI could receive intensive treatment while also being protected—and protecting others—from the consequences of untreated illness.
But despite the legal green light, not a single SBHRF has opened.
Efforts to implement these facilities have been met with stiff resistance, especially from the ACLU of Arizona (who appears to have a hotline to the Governor’s Office) and the Arizona Center for Disability Law.
The absence of secure residential treatment is a policy failure with real human consequences. It leaves Arizona’s most vulnerable residents (and their families) without hope for recovery and puts their families in a position of helplessness.
AzPHA will continue to push for the creation of SBHRFs, insisting that compassion and safety must guide mental health policy—not fear or ideology.
Please take a few minutes to read this article from Natalie Robbins at the Tucson Sentinel ‘Major gap in our system’: Arizona lacks secure facilities for people with serious mental illness
Whether we’re able to get these critical residential settings finally off the ground will depend on whether the upcoming state budget funds these important treatment spaces – and whether SB1604 is passed and signed.
While the ACLU does some good things and has been pushing back on some of the more harmful decisions by the Trump administration (and filing lawsuits) they’re 100% off the mark on this SBHRF issue.
We’re crossing our fingers that Governor Hobbs will listen to the Mad Moms and the Association, the Chronically Mentally Ill and AzPHA instead of just the ACLU when SB1604 hits her desk and when start-up one-time funding for SBRFs are discussed in the budget.
