That’s a quote from Michelle Baker, executive vice president of Behavioral Health Services at Southcentral Foundation, who is part of a successful effort that will result in Alaska’s first crisis stabilization centers opening in Anchorage and Juneau this year.
Writing for the Juneau Empire, Clarise Larson detailed the new $18 million facility opening in Juneau that “will offer the first crisis stabilization center for adolescents and adults in Southeast Alaska [and] will have 23-hour access to mental health and substance use care and services at the center [,] along with short-term crisis residential stays of up to a week for patients who are unable to stabilize at the crisis stabilization center.”
Here’s a look at the new facility, courtesy of the Juneau Empire, which clearly presents as a calm and therapeutic setting in stark contrast to a jail or a hospital emergency room:
Wade Bryson, an assembly member for the city of Juneau, praised the new center telling Larson that it is “sorely needed.” That’s because, as Larson reported, “Alaska has long been among the national leaders in the rate in which people die by suicide and … currently leads the nation in the rate of young people who die by suicide.”
Meanwhile, in Anchorage, two centers will open this year that operate in roughly the same way as the Juneau center.