It’s important that Blue Earth County jail employees were recently trained in recognizing inmates who might have mental health problems.

But the fact that they need the training signals another serious problem in the mental health system: It’s backed up and those who need help are not getting it.

A report in The Free Press Thursday showed how jail employees now must be trained in recognizing inmates who may have mental health problems. Many who end up in jail, don’t usually report to officers that they have mental health issues, but a report from Minnesota sheriffs suggest that as many as a third of inmates may be on medication for mental health.

Organizers of the training emphasized jailers and other personnel are not equipped to treat mentally ill patients, but if they can recognize someone with mental illness, they can get them the help they need. Without this recognition, people with mental illness may languish in jail for days, making their conditions worse.

While the Legislature in 2013 tried to solve the problem by requiring people with mental illness to be released from jail to a psychiatric facility within 48 hours, the lack of beds elsewhere leaves inmates in jail longer than that.

The new rule actually created a backlog in the system. More mentally ill patients were being moved out of jail into psychiatric facilities, but that left no room for people in bigger hospitals who were ready to be moved out of the security hospitals to the same smaller psychiatric facilities.

Gov. Mark Dayton tried to address this issue with a proposal to spend $177 million on mental health facilities this year. The money would have allowed the state’s smaller, 16-bed facilities to operate up to their capacity and called for increasing staff at state hospitals, including the one in St. Peter.

With the funding bills stuck in partisan gridlock, the problems remain. The lack of state funding put the burden back down to the local jails. Those inmates already suffering mental illness will get worse.

— The Free Press of Mankato, Aug. 27