Three Things To Read This Week
1. New Federal Guidelines Signal A Shift In Crisis Response Strategy
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recently issued its 2025 National Behavioral Health Crisis Care Guidelines, offering local leaders a roadmap for expanding behavioral health support nationwide. These guidelines offer local leaders a comprehensive framework for delivering behavioral health support across the U.S., including detailed guidance on implementing Mobile Crisis Teams.
Key takeaways:
“law enforcement presence should be minimized to the degree possible, recognizing the potential harm and stigma associated with police involvement in behavioral health crises.”
Instead, “communities across the country have designed their mobile crisis services to rapidly meet the needs of individuals, provide support, ensure safety, and coordinate follow-up care.”
The benefits of this behavioral health-led approach are both practical and economic. Data from SAMHSA show:
“a 23 percent lower average cost per case compared to regular law enforcement intervention”; and
“reduced inpatient hospitalization costs by approximately 79 percent in follow-up periods after crisis episodes.”
Lessons from successful programs: Mobile crisis teams can transform how cities respond to behavioral health crises. SAMHSA highlights programs across the country that demonstrate how these teams save lives, reduce costs, and provide better care with the right support. Here are three key insights:
Staffing Mobile Crisis Teams with a powerful blend of clinical expertise and lived experience. For example, in Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan: “Each team includes a clinical social worker and a peer recovery coach with lived experience.”
Expanding To 24/7 Coverage. Crisis teams should be available whenever a crisis hits, day or night. For example, UC-Davis’ “mobile crisis team now promises 'in-person support, offered 24/7 on campus.'”
Specialized Teams Deliver Targeted Results. Take, for example, mobile crisis teams focused on youth. In both Connecticut and Oklahoma, youth-oriented “mobile crisis programs have been linked to decreases in school arrests, improved school attendance, and a decline in police calls.”
The upshot: Expanding mobile crisis teams can save lives, reduce costs, and build healthier communities.
2. Three More Mobile Crisis Teams Launch—Or Expand—Across The Country
Juneau, Alaska launched a new mobile crisis team composed of a paramedic and a clinician that operates daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. As Juneau Police Chief Derek Bos explained to Juneau Empire reporter Mark Sabbatini, the program “will reduce unnecessary law enforcement involvement” in behavioral health crises. Kim McDowell, Chief Nursing Officer at Bartlett Regional Hospital, said the program will also ease overburdened emergency rooms, calling the mobile crisis team “the first window of opportunity to provide de-escalation for somebody in crisis in the field that doesn’t involve EMS or the police department.”
Santa Cruz County, California recently launched a 24/7 mobile crisis response program “staffed with compassionate mental health professionals who [provide] culturally responsive, bilingual services” and “timely and empathetic support during crises,” the Press Banner reported. Similar to Juneau’s approach, Santa Cruz County leaders see the program as reducing reliance on emergency rooms and law enforcement while ensuring individuals receive personalized care wherever they are in the county.
King County, Washington has significantly increased its capacity by adding 10 new mobile crisis teams for adults, bringing the total number of adult teams to 27, The Seattle Times' Taylor Blatchford reports. King County Executive Dow Constantine said, “By expanding the number of mobile response teams, we’re on track to ensure people in crisis can get 24/7 help from a specialized behavioral health team.”
Related: Charlotte Rene Woods reports for the Virginia Mercury that mobile crisis teams are expanding throughout Virginia as “consensus has been building between some lawmakers and members of law enforcement that officers and deputies aren’t always the best people to take point or remain with people in crises for longer periods of time.”
Tazewell County Sheriff Brian Hieatt told the newspaper that fewer police officers responding to behavior health crises translates into more resources for law enforcement to solve serious crime—“when you’re looking at rural areas such as the county where I’m from and small police departments throughout the region …. taking just one person off patrol can hurt a community.”
3. Milestone: San Diego’s “Mobile Crisis Response Program Celebrates Four Years.”
Safer Cities has highlighted how, in San Diego County, “over 98% of [mental health] calls have been diverted from armed law enforcement, resulting in a trained mobile crisis response team arriving instead.”
Here are four recent highlights as one of the country’s first and most comprehensive mobile crisis programs marks its fourth year:
Launched in 2021 as a pilot with just two teams, the program has expanded to 44 teams, composed of “licensed mental health clinicians, case managers and peer support specialists”.
In its first year, MCRT handled 131 calls; this number surged to over 7,000 between July 2023 and June 2024.
50% of people in crisis were stabilized in the field. Luke Bergmann, the county’s Director of Behavioral Health Services, told NBC San Diego, “these teams are effectively meeting those in crisis where they are and stabilize more than 50% of cases in the field, reducing stress on law enforcement.”
San Diego’s mobile crisis teams are now equipped to respond to crises involving students from kindergarten through 12th grade across all school districts in the region. For Times of San Diego, Serena Neumeyer reports on the breadth of the outreach to schools—“faculty members in more than 700 schools have received instructions on how to contact the MCRT dispatch center for support during an emergency.”
ICYMI: San Diego County put together a ride-along style video to give an insider look at how the mobile crisis team operates:
