“Honestly, if I didn’t have these calls, I don’t know if I’d still be here,” a 27-year-old National Suicide Prevention Lifeline caller shared with a crisis worker at Common Ground Resource and Crisis Center. The caller initially reached out to the Lifeline in 2021, contemplating suicide for the first time after
When Steve Miccio’s family took him to a hospital in Dutchess County, New York, he was experiencing his first manic episode. “I went in ‘Steve,’” he says, “and came out of inpatient hospitalization broken.” He points out there was no mention of hope or recovery. “It was more about what
Long before the Covid pandemic, which thrust students across the United States into virtual classrooms, the internet was an issue for rural and remote communities. At every National Association of Counties rural caucus Dr. Ron Manderscheid attended throughout the years, a county commissioner shared the same story. He’s executive director
Ebony Chambers worked in mental health for years before her daughter experienced her first suicide attempt, and suddenly the entire family was thrust into crisis. “People often forget that families with children in crisis are in crisis themselves,” she points out. Navigating the Sacramento behavioral health system, Chambers quickly found
In the summer of 2020, Los Angeles—like the rest of the United States—was knee-deep in the Covid pandemic. Amid the disaster, day after day, tens of thousands of protesters gathered throughout the city, distraught and outraged by another plague upon our nation: racism. Protests were sparked by the killing of
Rebecca Boss says a crisis response may be the first and only chance to help a person experiencing a substance use disorder. “Not only to affect the outcome of the immediate crisis but also a person’s overall recovery process,” she says. Boss is a senior consultant at the Technical Assistance
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
Until 2008, Virginia had one of the most restrictive civil commitment clauses in the nation, tangling families in a web of exclusion and insufficient access to care. No one knows that better than journalist Pete Earley, author of “Crazy,” whose son, Kevin, was stuck in a cycle of crisis and
Mental health experts worldwide share a common frustration—the dearth of real-time data, they say, is a vital hindrance to developing and improving psychiatric crisis care. It results in long wait times and no centralized way to identify system bottlenecks or service delays. It also, says Prof. Martin Connor, CEO and
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
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