{"id":161975,"date":"2025-12-01T07:23:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T07:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/161975\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T07:23:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T07:23:15","slug":"20m-state-funding-request-could-bring-mental-health-facility-back-to-knoxville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/161975\/","title":{"rendered":"$20M state funding request could bring mental health facility back to Knoxville"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tennessee seeks $20 million to build a mental health facility in Knoxville, addressing a critical shortage of inpatient treatment beds in the region.<\/p>\n<p>KNOXVILLE, Tenn. \u2014 The Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services asked Governor Bill Lee for $20 million to build an inpatient mental health facility in Knoxville during a budget hearing earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Commissioner Marie Williams said the request was a response to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbir.com\/article\/news\/local\/involuntary-commitment-for-defendants-bill-passes\/51-6a7a1f3e-0efb-4dab-b3c1-8ce9d618aa93\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Jillian&#8217;s Law,\u00a0<\/a>which allows the state to commit certain criminal defendants for inpatient treatment involuntarily.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We really are struggling with beds,&#8221; Williams told the governor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2012, the Tennessee Department of Mental Health announced it would close the state-run institute in Knox County at Lakeshore Park. Leaders at the time argued that mental healthcare was trending away from inpatient care facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The closure also made the nearest state-run facility to Knox County, the Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute, located in the Chattanooga area.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbir.com\/article\/news\/local\/state-report-on-mental-health-bed-capacity\/51-041daec2-8bce-4413-91d9-6a1e22e25e6e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Williams cited a study from 2024<\/a> that found Knoxville needs a 100-bed psychiatric hospital and requests from the Knox County delegation as the reason for the request.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She said they don&#8217;t plan to use new state money and instead use funds from the mental health trust fund. Of the $20 million proposal, $12 million would be non-recurring.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We know that this will be a tight year, we&#8217;re very aware of that,&#8221; Williams said. &#8220;However, we believe with these proposals this year, we stand ready with our behavioral health providers, consumers, family-faith-based organization, and hospital teams to take additional strides toward our vision of seeing all Tennesseans living with behavioral health challenges thriving.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Williams said the McNabb Center was the only organization to respond to a proposal to run an inpatient facility a few years back.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>During the Nov. 25 Knoxville City Council meeting, Councilmember Andrew Roberto provided an update on the funding proposal, calling it a &#8220;fantastic development.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think everybody wants to see a return of a mental health hospital in our community and we all need to be talking to our representatives about making sure that this actually gets funded in the budget,&#8221; he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Back in 2023, Knox County Commissioner Kyle Ward sent a letter to Governor Bill Lee asking the state to redirect money from a proposed pedestrian bridge over the Tennessee River to an inpatient mental care hospital in Knox County.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The hospital will serve as a regional center for mental health in the region as well,&#8221; Ward said. &#8220;We could do more preventative care and we can have better access for our local citizens.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Senators Becky Massey and Richard Briggs (R &#8211; Knoxville) have also pushed for the new facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennessee seeks $20 million to build a mental health facility in Knoxville, addressing a critical shortage of inpatient&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[163,85,46,522,523],"class_list":{"0":"post-161975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}