Why Austin Brought Mental Health Clinicians Into Its 911 Call Center
Topline:
Signs of mental illness are rarely as clear as smoke rising from a building.
That’s a problem for 911 operators who are tasked with dispatching first responders to over 240 million calls each year—firefighters to a burning building; EMTs to a heart attack; police officers to a home invasion. Due to the difficulty of confidently detecting signs of a mental health related issue, 911 operators often default to sending armed officers to mental health related calls even in cities where civilian mobile crisis response teams exist specifically to respond to these types of calls.
911 operators often do not possess the nuanced expertise or training necessary to glean whether a situation needs a civilian health care expert or an armed officer, and they fear shouldering the blame if a call goes sideways. The upshot is that cities waste millions, police resources are strained, and people are not getting the care they need.
To solve this problem, a handful of cities–including Austin, Texas–are bringing mental health experts into 911 call centers so that dispatchers know which responder to send to provide “the right care, at the right place, at the right time.”
By The Numbers:
A new report from the University of Chicago’s Health Lab found that over 75% of 911 calls dispatched to police across America do not involve the type of serious crime or public safety threat that merit an armed police response.
In Atlanta, a recent study found that the city’s crisis response program could have been the appropriate responder to more than 600,000 calls over a four-year period to which 911 operators instead dispatched the police.
In Durham, North Carolina, a study found that up to 90% of 911 calls relate to mental health issues, but 911 operators code only a tiny fraction of those calls as such.
A New Way Forward:
In Austin, Texas, clinicians with the city’s crisis response team—the Expanded Mobile Crisis Outreach Team—work within the 911 call center around the clock. Clinicians can provide emotional support and guidance to callers in crisis, facilitate access to needed community resources, check records to see if a person already is connected to resources, and schedule a time to call to check up on the person later that day.
Clinicians also train operators to identify the signs and symptoms of behavioral health problems, answer questions, and provide instant feedback after calls come in, sometimes listening to recorded calls along with the operator who handled them, like a coach dissecting game film. Involving clinicians “as soon as possible” allows Austin’s program to “provide the right care, at the right place, at the right time,” Marisa Malik, who manages Austin’s civilian mobile crisis response program, told Safer Cities.
Today, about 80% of the calls referred to Austin’s mobile crisis team are successfully handled without involving police officers or other first responders. About 25% of these calls are resolved by providing counseling and information over the phone without the need to dispatch a mobile crisis team at all. With thousands of dollars saved for each diverted call, Austin expects to save about $12 million every year.
Austin is one in a growing number of places putting this model into practice:
Pima County (Tucson), Arizona placed behavioral health crisis professionals at the Tucson Police Department’s 911 call center. Like Austin, counselors on site have been able to identify behavioral health calls and dispatch a mobile crisis response team, clearing calls from the system and leaving fire, police, and EMS to focus on high-priority calls. For Johnnie Gasper, who oversees crisis services in Tucson, integrating the mobile crisis team into the 911 call center means that a person in crisis “receives appropriate care, and we take a call off of law enforcement’s plate.”
Earlier this month, Durham launched a pilot program that will embed licensed mental health professionals into the 911 call center to determine whether to handle the situation through virtual communication, send a civilian mobile crisis team, or dispatch both a police officer and a healthcare worker.
