Washington state is in the grips of a mental health crisis.

The current obstacles in getting help to people with psychiatric illnesses is the product of a broken system.

The rules don’t make sense. The funding is nowhere near adequate. There’s a large and growing shortage of psychiatric beds throughout the state.

The situation may get worse. Western State Hospital, the state’s 800-bed psychiatric hospital, is in danger of losing federal funding because of an acute staff shortage. The work there is difficult, even dangerous, and the pay is comparatively low.

Initiatives that cut taxes don’t help the problem either.

It’s well past time for lawmakers, perhaps a blue-ribbon panel of the state’s most effective leaders, to take a comprehensive look at the problems and come up with aggressive solutions.

Significant new funding for state and local agencies is necessary, to be sure, but so are changes in rules that hamper local governments and families from intervening when someone is in crisis or from compelling someone to get the help he or she needs.

The case of a troubled inmate in the Island County jail, as described in a recent Whidbey News-Times article, highlights some of those obstacles.

The 30-year-old inmate has been in the midst of a mental health crisis since arriving in the jail this summer. He persists in covering the walls of his cell with feces. He’s assaulted corrections deputies. He flooded his cell, sending feces-laced water to neighboring cells.

He refuses to take his medication and the jail can’t compel him to. He’s 87th on the list to go Western State Hospital.

The inmate can’t be involuntarily committed to another regional facility because the professionals who need to evaluate him won’t come to the jail if a charge is pending against him. But if the criminal charge were dropped to allow him to get help, there’s no guarantee he will be committed or that a bed would be available.

The fundamental philosophy that seems to drive some of the systemic madness is the idea that jails are safe or appropriate places to hold people with mental illness.

Last year, the state Supreme Court ruled that the practice of warehousing mentally ill patients in hospital without treatment is unlawful. The justices recognized that detaining a person with mental illness and not providing treatment is not just unethical but harmful to the vulnerable patients.

But the same problem persists in jails, where many more people with serious mental health problems are being held with little or no treatment.

Island County officials concede that the jail isn’t equipped to handle the troubled inmate. They agree that jails in general aren’t the right place for most people with mental health problems.

The problem is, too often the only other option is to put someone who’s a danger to himself or others back on the street.