Peninsula: Man’s fiery death pokes another hole in region’s mental health safety net

Published 12:01 am Friday, March 12, 2004

Before an accidental apartment fire killed 46-year-old Daniel Sullivan last week, his friends had tried repeatedly to get him help for his alcoholism and mental illness.

Sullivan, a recovering alcoholic who had started drinking again and had become distraught since his mother’s death last fall, was too sick to seek help, said his fiancée, Linda Beach.

Beach tried enlisting help from police and mental health professionals.

On one occasion when police were called, they took Sullivan into protective custody for a mental health evaluation.

But twists in the law combined with what Beach, law-enforcement officials and mental health professionals see as the lack of a sorely needed resource — a mental health crisis center — on the North Olympic Peninsula may have put Sullivan back in a place that ultimately lead to his death.

“What happened to Dan was a tragedy to me and to his family, but it could’ve been stopped,” Beach said Friday. “It was uncalled-for. We needed the law enforcement, we needed the mental health support, and we didn’t get it in time.”

The mental health care center at Olympic Memorial Hospital closed in 1993.