Pictured above is Crystal Watkins, MD, chair of psychiatry and behavioral health at MedStar Harbor Hospital.
John is a savvy business owner and employer. He’s highly educated. He has a close-knit and supportive family. And he suffers from bipolar disorder.
Although he has run a successful company for decades, there have been times when John’s mental illness caused major problems for himself and his family. During one particular episode, John came face to face with six police officers on his front lawn, all with their guns drawn.
“He had stopped taking his medications and started acting erratically and threatening his sister,” says Crystal Watkins, MD, chair of psychiatry and behavioral health at MedStar Harbor Hospital. “And unfortunately, his family had no recourse but to call 911 so he could get the help he needed. But they wanted him to get treated, not get arrested.”
MedStar Health seeks to reduce encounters like this by partnering with the Greater Baltimore Regional Integrated Crisis System (GBRICS). As part of a five-year plan, the mission is three-fold; to create a mental health crisis hotline; to provide 24-hour access to mobile crisis response teams, and; to give those experiencing a mental health crisis same-day treatment.
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Instead of calling 911 that day, John’s family could have dialed 988, a dedicated nationwide behavioral health crisis call center. Then, a crisis response team would have been dispatched to the scene where trained mental health professionals would have assessed the immediate crisis, de-escalated the situation and taken John to a community-based mental health clinic for proper treatment that day.
“The goal is to reduce police interactions and emergency department admissions,” says Jill Donaldson, president of MedStar Harbor Hospital. She adds that an average of 36% of Emergency Department visits each year are related to Behavioral Health or substance abuse across all four MedStar Health Baltimore-area hospitals. “With this system in place, we can give our patients the right care they need at the right place and right time,” she says.
Dr. Watkins believes implementing the GBRICS system will prove especially valuable for the families of those with who suffer from mental illnesses. They often do not know where to turn in emergencies, she says, and often feel guilt for calling law enforcement on their loved ones.
“Now, these families and caregivers will have the appropriate resources, so the next time their loved one has a mental health crisis, it’s not a criminal event,” she says, adding that this partnership is a significant step toward destigmatizing mental health. “This transcends socio-economic status, age and race. No one is immune.”