- Arlington County, Virginia to “launch [a] new behavioral health crisis response team.”
ARLNow, an independent news outlet based in Arlington, reports that the “new “Mobile Outreach Support Team [or, MOST] consist[s] of “a licensed behavioral health clinician, a certified peer recovery specialist, and an outreach worker from Arlington’s Department of Human Services.”
The county emphasizes that “the goals of MOST include increasing access to mental health and substance use treatment and decreasing the role of non-clinical first responders in addressing mental health needs.” Moreover, “[t]he team will work alongside emergency responders, providing alternatives to incarceration … while decreasing hospital emergency room and psychiatric hospital admissions.”
- In Indianapolis, a “clinician-led response team begins to respond to mental health crises without police.” Reporting for NPR in Indianapolis, Katrina Ross details how “Indianapolis’ new Clinician-Led Community Response Pilot,” which “consists of clinicians and peer specialists … are dispatched to people in crisis who call 911. The team can connect people with mental health resources, and transport them to a hospital or treatment center, such as the city’s Assessment and Intervention Center at the Community Justice Campus.” Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett told NPR that he supports the clinician-led response because the “team can divert health problems away from incarceration and into effective treatment.”
- “Laguna Beach launches Be Well OC mobile mental health and wellness services.” Reporting for the Los Angeles Times, Andrew Turner explains that “advocates of the program have touted its ability to lighten the load on law enforcement and emergency medical service personnel.” As the Vice President of Be Well told Turner, “We are the [people] who shoulder those calls because we have the time, we have the resources, we have the ability to focus on that issue [and] we’re able to focus and de-escalate and to stabilize in the community, and that’s the benefit of us working alongside of public safety.”
