FULTON, Mo. - Gov. Jay Nixon marked a historic moment for Missouri's mental health system as he joined state and local officials in breaking ground on the new Fulton State Psychiatric Hospital campus Wednesday.
The groundbreaking took place in front of the existing administration building, which will eventually be rebuilt and become the front entrance of the new hospital.
The project was approved in 2014 to replace the state's outdated and deteriorating maximum-security psychiatric facility at Fulton with a new state-of-the-art mental hospital that will be safer and more conducive to modern treatment.
Demolition, abatement and construction began earlier this month. Construction is projected to be complete by December 2017. The last building to be demolished will be the maximum security Biggs Forensic Center after the patients have moved into the new facility in the spring of 2018.
The current hospital building is the oldest state psychiatric hospital west of the Mississippi River. Centers on the campus treat patients with serious mental illness who are committed by Missouri courts for evaluation and treatment related to a crime, or have seriously assaulted patients or staff in other state psychiatric hospitals.
