Western State Hospital Virtual Q&A Set For Thursday

LAKEWOOD, WA — Western State Hospital is set to undergo a massive overhaul, and the City of Lakewood is giving the public several opportunities to learn more about the project before it begins.

After an open house at Custer Elementary late last month, the city is now an online Q&A event held over Zoom on Thursday, Sept. 9 at 6 p.m. The event will allow the public to directly ask the DSHS questions about the hospital overhaul.

Under the Western State Hospital Master Plan, Western State Hospital and its campus would be completely reconstructed. Among other changes, the proposal would create several new buildings, including:

• A new, 350-bed forensic hospital.
• An 18-bed residential cottage at the Child Study and Treatment Center.
• A new 48-bed community residential treatment facility.

The new forensic hospital would require several of the campus' current buildings be demolished.

According to organizers, the aim is to transition the hospital to primarily treat forensic patients — patients who have been placed in treatment by the courts — instead of civil commitment patients, which make up the majority of the roughly 850 patients on site currently. The hospital is also in need of many general quality-of-life upgrades. As the plan says, Western State is "no longer well-suited to the provision of core services" and needs to be thoroughly modernized.

Western State was first established simply as the "Insane Asylum" back in 1871. It was renamed Western State Hospital in 1889. Many of its first facilities were built in the 1880s and 1890s, with the last two buildings added in 1982 and 2000.

"In recent years, WSH has been challenged to adapt to contemporary models of care, in part due to the out-dated facilities," the plan reads. "The State has committed to reinvesting in behavioral health care through a combination of distributed residential treatment facilities and new hospital facilities for forensic care patients.

You can also learn more about the overhaul from the City of Lakewood's website.