The facility, the Mid-Cities Clinic, is at 720 S. Seventh St. and will provide outpatient counseling, psychiatric services, urgent care, a medication clinic and a pharmacy, services the mentally ill often do not receive in an emergency room setting.

"What it will do is give us another facility in town where the bulk of the emergency room problems are,'' Stuart Ghertner, director of outpatient services for Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services, said.

Ghertner said the hope is that people needing care would go to Mid-Cities instead of Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center, Valley Hospital or University Medical Center. About 70 to 80 people with mental health problems are held daily in Southern Nevada emergency rooms because public psychiatric beds are too few.

Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services has 242 psychiatric beds, and WestCare, a nonprofit that serves indigent and low-income Nevadans, has about 25.

Health officials have said that when mental health patients take up beds in emergency rooms, the care of people needing medical treatment is compromised.

Hospitals are required to hold mental health patients, regardless of whether they have a medical problem, until they can go to an inpatient psychiatric facility. Sometimes such patients remain in emergency rooms up to five days.

Carlos Brandenburg, administrator for the state Division of Mental Health & Developmental Services, said in a prepared statement Thursday that the Mid-Cities clinic is expected to provide services to 1,400 patients a year.

The clinic will staff 45 mental health professionals and will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

State mental health officials said office hours probably will be extended soon to include weekends and evenings.