(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- 1. The mental health unit inside the Glendive Medical Center is dark, and when Jaime Shanks declares that a light switch surely must be around here somewhere, a faint echo chases the words down an empty hall.
“Here it is,” she says. The lobby flickers into clear view. “As you can see, everything is state-of-the-art, and it’s just a gorgeous facility.” She approaches a window and motions to the greenery beyond. “And isn’t this beautiful? A little courtyard you can look out on.” She admires it for a moment. “They didn’t want an atmosphere that felt too institutionalized. The colors all around, if you notice, are very warm.”
Behind a nurses’ station, a dry-erase board says that today is March 30. It’s actually late June. For three months the unit has been dormant, lights out. Shutdowns are hardly unusual; sometimes they last years. Since its grand opening in 2002, this unit—the only place in eastern Montana where a person with a mental health emergency can be admitted for inpatient care—has languished in a state of desertion more often than not.
