Over the past two decades, Dr. Madelyn Gould has evaluated the SAMHSA-funded National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, studying whether the crisis intervention service significantly decreases suicide risk, despair, and hopelessness. (It does.) She’s a professor of epidemiology in Columbia University’s psychiatry department and a research scientist at the New York State
There’s a fundamental change underway, where accessible, therapeutic, and community-based response to behavioral health crises is gaining recognition as a distinct and essential community service. No longer satisfied with choosing between criminalization and medicalization, nationwide, there’s momentum to define behavioral health crisis response on its own terms. On July 16,
Between the hours of 6 am and 10 pm, seven days a week, behavioral health call takers sit alongside 911 call takers at the Houston Office of Emergency Management, ready to meet the mental health crisis needs of Harris County’s 4.1 million people. The first of its kind in the
There’s been much guesswork in determining the call volume 988 will experience, especially calls it could divert from 911. Americans make 240 million 911 calls per year, and behavioral health experts believe 988 could deflect at least 10%. This estimate comes, in part, from a Treatment Advocacy Center report highlighting
Psychiatrist Joe Parks, M.D., says most states have a behavioral health system that’s “underfunded and understaffed.” Dr. Parks is the medical director of the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. He’s also the former director of Medicaid in Missouri. During his tenure as state Medicaid director, he found that people with
When Pierluigi Mancini and his family navigated the behavioral healthcare system in Atlanta in the ‘80s, they faced barriers. Not because of language, though they’d recently moved from Colombia to the United States, but culturally. “My mother, who speaks three languages and has lived on three different continents, struggled to
Annie Murdock sits at her computer monitoring multiple conversations at the Kansas Suicide Prevention Head Quarters (KSPHQ). She notices a particularly challenging and emotionally intense chat that a KSPHQ chat responder is engaged in. Immediately following this particular chat, Murdock hops on the phone with the crisis worker to provide
Nearly a year before the Covid pandemic began, behavioral health crisis professionals became physically co-located at the Tucson Police Department’s 911 call center. However, in March 2020, as communities started to implement physical distancing requirements to halt the spread of the virus, Johnnie Gasper and his colleagues were uncertain what
In anticipation of 988—the three-digit number for mental health, substance use, and suicidal crisis telecom companies must make live by July 16, 2022—communities throughout the United States are examining their crisis systems. “They want to ensure there are rapid and appropriate responses in place that match people’s needs,” says Amy
Gregg Graham says there’s a vital moment for any person experiencing a substance use disorder that can positively alter their trajectory. “It’s when their desire for change and access to care intersect,” he says. “If the first happens without the latter, you’ve lost an opportunity to save a life.” Graham
