A couple of years ago, the trickle became a flood. Christina Lockyer-White had long known that the skilled nursing facility where she worked in Bakersfield was receiving more mental health patients than it previously housed but, after the pandemic, those numbers appeared to skyrocket.
“We’re seeing more and more mental health [patients] coming in my building,” said Lockyer-White, a 20-year certified nursing assistant. “They are younger. Many of them are homeless. When I started as a CNA, we had more dementia patients or people who needed rehab after a stroke — some kind of skilled nursing need, for which we all have trained.”
