More beds available for mental health patients

An agreement has been reached between Santa Barbara and Ventura County leaders to help ease issues with mental health patients.

Currently Santa Barbara County only has 16 beds available and, at times, more are needed. Ventura County has agreed to accept the overflow patients, when beds there, are available.

In recent years, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown has said, mental health patients who end up in jail, are adding to the overcrowding issue he is dealing with at the main facility near Goleta. Brown says, in many cases, those inmates need more treatment, medication and care than incarceration.