Mobile crisis services are increasingly in the limelight. Since the onset of the Covid pandemic, telehealth and mobile crisis teams have allowed for much-needed flexibility in care amidst lockdowns and physical distancing requirements. Simultaneously, a cultural push for reimagining public safety has resulted in communities demanding a clear pathway for
It’s April 2020–the early days of the Covid pandemic and the height of lockdown in Georgia. A teen who is suicidal shows up to an emergency department twice, but no facility in the state will take him because he has Covid. He’s asymptomatic and will test positive for the next
Handcuffed in the back of a police car after being pepper-sprayed, a nine-year-old in Rochester, New York, is sitting hunched over. Between sobs, she says to the nearby officer, “Please don’t do this to me.” The officer replies, “You did it to yourself, hon.” Nine officers are at the scene, responding
Washington was the first state to propose implementation legislation for 988, the three-digit number for behavioral health emergencies that must be available nationwide on July 16, 2022. Suicidologist Jennifer Stuber, Ph.D., helped craft it. She first heard of 988 on the news. “Just like everyone else,” she says. “I thought, ‘I
States across the nation are scrambling to develop or strengthen their crisis care systems before 988—the nationwide three-digit number for behavioral health emergencies—becomes a reality on July 16, 2022. Kirsten Beronio, JD, Policy and Regulatory Affairs director at the National Association for Behavioral Healthcare, says states can, at least in
For the first time, federal funding will go to all 50 states to support development of mental health crisis systems. The funding, about $35M annually, was added to the Mental Health Block Grant, which is distributed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to all states via
Amid the global pandemic, Nikki Highsmith Vernick and Glenn E. Schneider of the Horizon Foundation, a health philanthropy in Howard County, Maryland, received landmark news. The Greater Baltimore Regional Integrated Crisis System Partnership, an initiative the two helped develop, became the recipient of a $45 million five-year grant to strengthen
Victor Armstrong, MSW, says, as it exists now, the behavioral health system is inherently flawed for African Americans, pointing out that treatment modalities and the way they’re framed “don’t take into account the nuances of race, culture, or ethnicity.” Armstrong, who is the director of the North Carolina Division for
Matthew L. Goldman, M.D., M.S., medical director of Comprehensive Crisis Services at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, says communities need to buckle down now to ensure that 988, the three-digit number the FCC designated to mirror 911 for mental health and suicide crises, fulfills its potential when it
When an ambulance is called to the scene of a crisis in the United States, no matter the type, there are a limited number of places it can go next. Emergency ground ambulance services can transport to a hospital, skilled nursing facility, or a dialysis center. More often than not,