Mississippi Today
Patients, advocates worry more people will end up in jail or without treatment following St. Dominic behavioral health closure

Julie Whitehead of Brandon is a longtime patient of St. Dominic’s behavioral health services. After being admitted to the hospital following a suicide attempt in 2006, Whitehead was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
She was admitted again six times over the next 15 years.
“Each one of those times, if I had not been admitted to St. D, I would be dead,” Whitehead said.
So when she heard the news the 83-bed unit was closing last week, she took it hard.
She has always considered herself lucky – she works part time and has Medicare and private insurance through her husband.
“I have resources. I’m not in the fix that a lot of people are in who suffer from mental illness. I’m not dependent on Medicaid and trying to find doctors who will take Medicaid, so I’m never worried about getting care,” she said.
But when St. Dominic’s announced the closure, her perspective changed.
“I’ve just kind of been in shock because if the beds aren’t there, it doesn’t matter whether I can pay for it or not …” she said.
The unit had been providing inpatient mental health and geriatric psychiatric treatment. But the nonprofit hospital, citing “significant financial challenges” and losses of several million dollars, announced it was discontinuing the services and laying off 5.5% of its total workforce earlier this month.
The hospital’s most recent available tax filing for the fiscal year ending June 2021 showed a loss of $21.7 million for the prior year. That year’s tax filing showed a gain but coincided with hospitals receiving an influx of federal COVID-19 aid.

Advocates and law enforcement worry that as a result of the closure, more people in the Jackson area who need treatment will end up in jails or without the help they need.
Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones called the move “disappointing” in a tweet.
“Jails across our state and America are populated with ‘patients’ suffering from mental illnesses. Sheriffs and wardens assume the responsibility of these individuals when in reality, SOME of them should not be in jail but rather a treatment institution,” he wrote. “The risks will increase.”
A spokesperson for St. Dominic said the hospital recognizes mental health is “a significant need.”
“While continuing to meet these needs directly is no longer viable for St. Dominic’s, we are working with partners to help patients access the care they need,” Meredith Bailess said in an emailed statement. “Our health system will continue to advocate for additional state and federal resources to stabilize healthcare providers in Mississippi.”
Although the Mississippi State Hospital opened 20 adult psychiatric beds earlier this year that had been closed due to staffing issues, reliance on the state-funded hospital is no longer a viable option as jailed suspects wait weeks and even months for an available bed for a mental health evaluation. Bed availability at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson is limited, with only 21 adult beds and 12 beds for children.
Hinds Behavioral Health Services is one of 14 regional community mental health centers in Mississippi. The goal of the centers is to provide services to citizens with mental health issues and, when possible, keep people out of institutions.
The center runs a 24/7 mobile crisis unit that responds to people in crisis and attempts to stabilize them.
However, of the 1,196 people the unit came in contact with over the last year, 643 of those required a higher level of care, or admission to an inpatient facility, according to Jamie Evans, the supervisor for the mobile crisis unit at Hinds Behavioral Health Services.
When that happens, there are two options in the metro area for those people to go and immediately receive care: St. Dominic and Merit Health Central. The other options, which are referred to as a “single point-of-entry,” is the 16-bed crisis stabilization unit in Jackson. Another is the unit in Brookhaven, about an hour drive from Jackson.
Crisis stabilization units are short-term residential treatment facilities run by community health centers where people having a mental health crisis can be stabilized.
Single point-of-entry locations have memorandums of understanding with the community health center, and patients are able to bypass emergency rooms and be immediately admitted for care.
“It’s almost as if even if they are full, they secure beds on the side for us, because we’re meeting an individual in crisis, in one of the most vulnerable points in their mental health,” said Evans, explaining the relationship between Hinds Behavioral Health Services and single points of entry. “It’s very fast paced, and we really don’t have time to sit in the ER and wait for a doctor to see them.”
Now, however, the only single point-of-entry option besides the crisis stabilization unit in Jackson is Merit Health Central, which houses around 70 psychiatric beds, according to Evans.

The services’ closure, which Hinds Behavioral Health Services learned about at the same time the hospital made its public announcement, will leave a substantial gap, Evans and other mental health advocates agreed.
“There will be a huge impact to the systems, especially the elderly and those that find themselves in a crisis situation,” said Angela Ladner, executive director of the Mississippi Psychiatric Association.
She also said the speed at which the closure is happening is “disconcerting.”
In worse-case scenarios, mentally ill people with nowhere to go can end up in jail – unregulated facilities that are detrimental to people going through a mental health crisis.
In an attempt to minimize that practice, the Legislature this year passed House Bill 1222, which required mental health training for law enforcement agencies.
The hospital, which was purchased by the Baton Rouge-based Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System in 2019, announced the unit was closing on June 5 and would stop accepting patients at 7 a.m. the next day.
In the meantime, Evans and other advocates say they will work together to find a way to bridge the gap. Hinds Behavioral Health Services received funding to open a second, 16-bed crisis stabilization unit in Hinds County, but that won’t happen immediately.
Whitehead says her next steps are to collect a “portable” version of her more-than-a-decade worth of medical records to take with her wherever she lands next.
She guesses the only other thing she can do is “do my best to stay stable.”
Correction 6/14/23: This story has been updated to reflect that there is also a crisis stabilization unit in Jackson.
Editor’s note: Julie Whitehead freelanced for the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, which is now part of Mississippi Today.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Early voting proposal killed on last day of Mississippi legislative session
Mississippi will remain one of only three states without no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting.
Senate leaders, on the last day of their regular 2025 session, decided not to send a bill to Gov. Tate Reeves that would have expanded pre-Election Day voting options. The governor has been vocally opposed to early voting in Mississippi, and would likely have vetoed the measure.
The House and Senate this week overwhelmingly voted for legislation that established a watered-down version of early voting. The proposal would have required voters to go to a circuit clerk’s office and verify their identity with a photo ID.
The proposal also listed broad excuses that would have allowed many voters an opportunity to cast early ballots.
The measure passed the House unanimously and the Senate approved it 42-7. However, Sen. Jeff Tate, a Republican from Meridian who strongly opposes early voting, held the bill on a procedural motion.
Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England chose not to dispose of Tate’s motion on Thursday morning, the last day the Senate was in session. This killed the bill and prevented it from going to the governor.
England, a Republican from Vancleave, told reporters he decided to kill the legislation because he believed some of its language needed tweaking.
The other reality is that Republican Gov. Tate Reeves strongly opposes early voting proposals and even attacked England on social media for advancing the proposal out of the Senate chamber.
England said he received word “through some sources” that Reeves would veto the measure.
“I’m not done working on it, though,” England said.
Although Mississippi does not have no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting, it does have absentee voting.
To vote by absentee, a voter must meet one of around a dozen legal excuses, such as temporarily living outside of their county or being over 65. Mississippi law doesn’t allow people to vote by absentee purely out of convenience or choice.
Several conservative states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, have an in-person early voting system. The Republican National Committee in 2023 urged Republican voters to cast an early ballot in states that have early voting procedures.
Yet some Republican leaders in Mississippi have ardently opposed early voting legislation over concerns that it undermines election security.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate
Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.
House and Senate lawmakers approved a compromise bill in votes on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will likely head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his signature after it clears a procedural motion.
The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers followed hours of heated debate in which Democrats, almost all of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. They also said the bill could bog universities down with costly legal fights and erode academic freedom.
Democratic Rep. Bryant Clark, who seldom addresses the entire House chamber from the podium during debates, rose to speak out against the bill on Tuesday. He is the son of the late Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to serve as speaker pro tempore and preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction.
“We are better than this, and all of you know that we don’t need this with Mississippi history,” Clark said. “We should be the ones that say, ‘listen, we may be from Mississippi, we may have a dark past, but you know what, we’re going to be the first to stand up this time and say there is nothing wrong with DEI.'”
Legislative Republicans argued that the measure — which will apply to all public schools from the K-12 level through universities — will elevate merit in education and remove a list of so-called “divisive concepts” from academic settings. More broadly, conservative critics of DEI say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors and infuse left-wing ideology into campus life.
“We are a diverse state. Nowhere in here are we trying to wipe that out,” said Republican Sen. Tyler McCaughn, one of the bill’s authors. “We’re just trying to change the focus back to that of excellence.”
The House and Senate initially passed proposals that differed in who they would impact, what activities they would regulate and how they aim to reshape the inner workings of the state’s education system. Some House leaders wanted the bill to be “semi-vague” in its language and wanted to create a process for withholding state funds based on complaints that almost anyone could lodge. The Senate wanted to pair a DEI ban with a task force to study inefficiencies in the higher education system, a provision the upper chamber later agreed to scrap.
The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.
The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the measure but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, parents of minor students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law.
People could only sue after they go through an internal campus review process and a 25-day period when schools could fix the alleged violation. Republican Rep. Joey Hood, one of the House negotiators, said that was a compromise between the chambers. The House wanted to make it possible for almost anyone to file lawsuits over the DEI ban, while Senate negotiators initially bristled at the idea of fast-tracking internal campus disputes to the legal system.
The House ultimately held firm in its position to create a private cause of action, or the right to sue, but it agreed to give schools the ability to conduct an investigative process and potentially resolve the alleged violation before letting people sue in chancery courts.
“You have to go through the administrative process,” said Republican Sen. Nicole Boyd, one of the bill’s lead authors. “Because the whole idea is that, if there is a violation, the school needs to cure the violation. That’s what the purpose is. It’s not to create litigation, it’s to cure violations.”
If people disagree with the findings from that process, they could also ask the attorney general’s office to sue on their behalf.
Under the new law, Mississippi could withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply. Schools would be required to compile reports on all complaints filed in response to the new law.
Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to eliminate DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee. With the national headwinds at their backs and several other laws in Republican-led states to use as models, Mississippi lawmakers made plans to introduce anti-DEI legislation.
The policy debate also unfolded amid the early stages of a potential Republican primary matchup in the 2027 governor’s race between State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. White, who has been one of the state’s loudest advocates for banning DEI, had branded Hosemann in the months before the 2025 session “DEI Delbert,” claiming the Senate leader has stood in the way of DEI restrictions passing the Legislature.
During the first Senate floor debate over the chamber’s DEI legislation during this year’s legislative session, Hosemann seemed to be conscious of these political attacks. He walked over to staff members and asked how many people were watching the debate live on YouTube.
As the DEI debate cleared one of its final hurdles Wednesday afternoon, the House and Senate remained at loggerheads over the state budget amid Republican infighting. It appeared likely the Legislature would end its session Wednesday or Thursday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown.
“It is my understanding that we don’t have a budget and will likely leave here without a budget. But this piece of legislation …which I don’t think remedies any of Mississippi’s issues, this has become one of the top priorities that we had to get done,” said Democratic Sen. Rod Hickman. “I just want to say, if we put that much work into everything else we did, Mississippi might be a much better place.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
House gives Senate 5 p.m. deadline to come to table, or legislative session ends with no state budget
The House on Wednesday attempted one final time to revive negotiations between it and the Senate over passing a state budget.
Otherwise, the two Republican-led chambers will likely end their session without funding government services for the next fiscal year and potentially jeopardize state agencies.
The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure to extend the legislative session and revive budget bills that had died on legislative deadlines last weekend.
House Speaker Jason White said he did not have any prior commitment that the Senate would agree to the proposal, but he wanted to extend one last offer to pass the budget. White, a Republican from West, said if he did not hear from the Senate by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, his chamber would end its regular session.
“The ball is in their court,” White said of the Senate. “Every indication has been that they would not agree to extend the deadlines for purposes of doing the budget. I don’t know why that is. We did it last year, and we’ve done it most years.”
But it did not appear likely Wednesday afternoon that the Senate would comply.
The Mississippi Legislature has not left Jackson without setting at least most of the state budget since 2009, when then Gov. Haley Barbour had to force them back to set one to avoid a government shutdown.
The House measure to extend the session is now before the Senate for consideration. To pass, it would require a two-thirds majority vote of senators. But that might prove impossible. Numerous senators on both sides of the aisle vowed to vote against extending the current session, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the chamber said such an extension likely couldn’t pass.
Senate leadership seemed surprised at the news that the House passed the resolution to negotiate a budget, and several senators earlier on Wednesday made passing references to ending the session without passing a budget.
“We’ll look at it after it passes the full House,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby said.
The House and Senate, each having a Republican supermajority, have fought over many issues since the legislative session began early January.
But the battle over a tax overhaul plan, including elimination of the state individual income tax, appeared to cause a major rift. Lawmakers did pass a tax overhaul, which the governor has signed into law, but Senate leaders cried foul over how it passed, with the House seizing on typos in the Senate’s proposal that accidentally resembled the House’s more aggressive elimination plan.
The Senate had urged caution in eliminating the income tax, and had economic growth triggers that would have likely phased in the elimination over many years. But the typos essentially negated the triggers, and the House and governor ran with it.
The two chambers have also recently fought over the budget. White said he communicated directly with Senate leaders that the House would stand firm on not passing a budget late in the session.
But Senate leaders said they had trouble getting the House to meet with them to haggle out the final budget.
On the normally scheduled “conference weekend” with a deadline to agree to a budget last Saturday, the House did not show, taking the weekend off. This angered Hosemann and the Senate. All the budget bills died, requiring a vote to extend the session, or the governor forcing them into a special session.
If the Legislature ends its regular session without adopting a budget, the only option to fund state agencies before their budgets expire on June 30 is for Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers back into a special session later.
“There really isn’t any other option (than the governor calling a special session),” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann previously said.
If Reeves calls a special session, he gets to set the Legislature’s agenda. A special session call gives an otherwise constitutionally weak Mississippi governor more power over the Legislature.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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