ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A multi-million dollar project at our state’s largest mental health facility is picking up speed.

Developers are finalizing their plans for a new forensics unit at the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute. That’s the so-called mental health hospital in Las Vegas.

Officials say the new unit will be larger and include new resources for patients. But it will still only serve a specific purpose in New Mexico’s behavioral health system.

“In order for any behavioral health system to work, you need all components to work,” said Tim Shields, a New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute hospital administrator. 

That includes the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute. It’s a facility reserved for the most severe – and sometimes dangerous – mental health patients in New Mexico.

“If we can’t do that, and these individuals are at lower levels of care, it sort of destroys those levels of care. So what we need to do to address the entire behavioral health system is we need to do our job, which is that higher level of care,” said Shields. 

But Shields says that higher level of care has its limitations inside the institute’s 50-year-old home just outside Las Vegas.

“It doesn’t meet the requirements for behavioral health facility, including some risks for self harm, and things like that. That wouldn’t be allowed in a facility built today, and it’s not even ADA accessible,” Shields said. 

But those issues will soon be in the past. State leaders are finalizing design plans on a $140 million replacement facility which will include more exam rooms, group treatment areas, and other required amenities.

Shields says the new forensics unit will still have around 90 beds, but the upgrades will allow them to fill more of them at one time.

“We’re not trying to run it at 100% occupancy, but it will allow us the ability to do so,” said Shields. 

New Mexico state law says patients – and suspects – referred to the facility must be treated within 30 days.

Shields says they already do that, but a modernized facility will help keep up with increased demand.

“We’re seeing a pretty significant increase in the forensic referral population, so we’re trying to also be prepared to be able to manage that higher referral base,” Shields said. 

State officials say construction on the new facility should begin in October, and it could be ready for patients in 2027. Hopefully relieving pressure on other behavioral health facilities.

“If we don’t do that high end well, and take care of that, then it sort of crushes all of the lower levels of care that we’re hoping to build,” said Shields. 

Shields pointed out the current facility was built in 1972 by the Department of Corrections and was never really designed to treat mental health patients, but it’s taken about 10 years to get this new facility off the ground.