A midday ribbon cutting on June 24 marked the official opening of Nevada’s first Crisis Stabilization Center, located just south of Nellis Air Force Base.
The center aims to take treatment burdens off of local emergency rooms, where people experiencing mental and behavioral health crises often go first, and subsequently experience long wait times.
“This facility will significantly reduce unnecessary emergency room visits, freeing up hospital resources for medical emergencies, while ensuring people get specialized mental health care,” said Clark County Commissioner William McCurdy at Tuesday’s grand opening.
The multimillion-dollar outpatient facility comes after Mental Health America’s 2024 rankings, which placed the state 51st in the nation for its high prevalence of mental illness and lack of providers.
The center is a partnership between the state — which allocated more than $11 million to the project — and various local entities, including Clark County and University Medical Center.
It’s already begun accepting up to 35 patients, ages 18 and older.
UMC CEO Mason Van Houweling said these patients will be able to receive treatment much quicker than during an ER visit.
“Our goal is less than 24 hours, and most patients will be well under that,” he said. “That’s the goal, to be able to help stabilize immediately, deal with a medical screening, but also a mental health screening, and then figure out the resources available to that patient in a very rapid manner to be able to stabilize that crisis as quickly as possible.”
The facility will be staffed around the clock with 15 mental health professionals.
And more locations might be on the way, pending the existing center’s success.
“We know we want to do more in partnership with other agencies and municipalities, but we want to make sure this is fully operational and we have a [well-running] machine here before we start opening up more,” said Van Houweling.
