Corrections Ministries / Deacon John Cord

New programs will help counties address mental health challenges

We have a mental health crisis. You have read my thoughts on this before.

This week, I was in a meeting where a police officer was reading statistics about 911 calls to the small county where she was located. In February, more 80% of all calls to 911 were for mental health emergencies!

She went on to explain that this is not an abnormal percentage of calls for mental health emergencies. The calls were for many issues, including drug overdoses, dangerous or violent behavior due to a person having an attack of hallucinations, suicide attempts, and a host of other problems. She did explain that calls to 911 in her county have risen steadily during the past three years. She also told us that the percentage of mental health calls is also rising every month.

This trend is being noticed by Indiana and by many counties. This has led the state to strongly suggest every county create a Crisis Intervention Team, also called a CIT. Several counties have already begun this work, including Marion and Johnson counties. The counties train police officers, dispatch, hospital staffs, emergency responders and agency workers. These trained people are the ones who would respond to a mental health 911 call.

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and police officers are trained to recognize mental health issues and work to diffuse these issues rather than escalate them. Instead of arresting the person and taking them to a jail or lockup, the person would be taken to a mental health facility, where they can be further treated and evaluated.

An additional step that is being strongly suggested by the state is that each county create a Sequential Intercept Model, also referred to as a SIM. The county will evaluate their current practices for handling a mental health emergency and determine what is working correctly and what is not.

For example, when a call comes in to 911, does the dispatcher recognize this as a mental health emergency? If so, who do they call to respond? Before the CIT concept, any police officer would respond, regardless of their training for mental health issues. This led to almost all of those in a mental health crisis being taken to a jail, where there are very limited resources to help this person. The correct people to respond would be those trained in CIT.

Indiana is just getting started with the CIT and SIM processes. But in the counties where it has been implemented, CIT-trained responders have been able to redirect these folks to the correct treatment. This has resulted in a 50% or more reduction in incarceration for people who simply need mental health care.

We are just learning about the proper ways to help those who might experience a mental health crisis. There are only a few facilities scattered around the archdiocese that can work with people suffering a mental health crisis. These include Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis, Hendricks Behavioral Hospital in Plainfield, and the Stride Centers in Columbus and Bloomington.

If you or a loved one are suffering from a mental health crisis and you need to call 911, please explain to the dispatcher that you need someone who is trained to handle a mental health crisis. If you have a person who is considering suicide, call the suicide hotline at 988.

We all need to encourage and support our local governments to implement the CIT and SIM processes as fast as possible.
 

(Deacon John Cord is the coordinator of Corrections Ministry for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. For more information on supporting the office’s re-entry ministry, contact Deacon Cord at 317-432-6604 or e-mail jcord@archindy.org.) †