Governor Mike Pence announced Wednesday plans for a new $120 million mental health hospital on the east side of Indianapolis.
The state is partnering with Community Health Network to develop a neuro-diagnostic institute, which will have 159 beds and the capacity to treat 1,500 patients per year.
Pence emphasizes that along with confronting mental illness, the facility was created to fight the state’s ongoing drug addiction crisis.
Pence also notes that of the 30 thousand people incarcerated in Indiana, nearly half have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder.
“It is deeply troubling to recognize that our prisons have become the state’s largest mental health treatment provider," he says. "Today, that begins to change.”
The new facility will replace Larue Carter Hospital, one of six state psychiatric hospitals. Construction is set to begin next year – Pence says it will open by 2018.
