Mental health chief resigns
OLYMPIA – Washington state’s top mental health official has resigned, just a month after another senior manager resigned from the Department of Social and Health Services.
Karl Brimner, 57, resigned Wednesday, DSHS officials said Friday. Agency spokesman Jeff Weathersby refused to give any details of why Brimner resigned, or if he was asked to step down.
Brimner was director of the agency’s Mental Health Division since 2001, overseeing the state’s troubled principal mental institution, Western State Hospital, as well as Eastern State Hospital and a community mental health network.
“I thanked Karl for his important contributions to Washington and its citizens,” the department’s assistant secretary, Tim Brown, said in a written statement.
Directory assistance did not have a phone number listed for Brimner.
Brown will take over Brimner’s duties until a replacement is found. Brimner was paid about $95,000 a year.
The resignation of Brimner, who was in charge of nearly 3,000 employees and a $600 million annual budget, comes after Uma Ahluwalia was pushed out by DSHA director Robin Arnold-Williams. Ahluwalia had headed the child welfare system, and has since been replaced by Cheryl Stephani.
Cathy Gaylord, retired CEO of the Washington Community Mental Health Council, said that with new leadership at the DSHS, it’s not unexpected there will be major changes in management.
“We look forward to seeing who is put in that very difficult, very important position and hope that DSHS leadership will take input from key stakeholders in making their decision,” she said Friday.
Western State, home to about 800 severely mentally ill patients, went through turbulent times under Brimner’s charge.
In February, the Lakewood hospital was accused of releasing mentally ill patients before they should have been discharged, with some patients reportedly even hallucinating when they left. The accusations, denied by the hospital, were leveled in evidence filed as part of a 2-year-old patient dumping lawsuit against the hospital.
The hospital was also the center of a sexual-harassment case that ended with the November 2003 firing of an employee for harassing women co-workers. That scandal led Brimner to fire the hospital’s chief executive officer, C. Jan Gregg.