On-call clinicians will staff hotline, provide services
Blog note: this article references a grand jury report.
After first helping local police respond more effectively to mental-health emergencies and head off violent outcomes, Santa Clara County’s mobile-crisis response teams are expanding to handle crises reported by the general public.
The county’s Behavioral Health Services Department announced Monday that its squad of on-call clinicians will now also staff a hotline where they can triage psychiatric emergencies and “provide services in the community including crisis screening, intervention, de-escalation services, and connect or refer people to community resources,” according to a county news release.
County officials also revealed that staffing for the mobile-crisis program now stands at seven licensed clinicians and therapists, an increase from four last fall, which at that time had doubled from two when the pilot program launched in January 2018.
County residents in need of mental-health crisis help and intervention can call 800-704-0900 and dial option “2” on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Outside those hours, emergencies reported to the hotline will be answered by a clinician but not necessarily a mobile-crisis team.
The program was initially launched to support county law-enforcement agencies seeking help in dealing with mental-health emergencies that prompted a 911 call and a police response. Both statewide estimates and a civil grand jury report issued last year estimated that nearly 40 percent of police shootings in the county involved a person who exhibited signs of mental illness.
In tandem with the launch of the clinician response teams, two of which are dedicated to the San Jose area and southern Santa Clara County, local police agencies have instituted an increasing amount of crisis-intervention training — usually involving about 40 hours of instruction — given an increasing amount of police calls involve a mental-health emergency.
The county is also using grant money to establish a Psychological Emergency Response Team in Palo Alto that pairs a police officer and clinician to respond to mental-health incidents with teens and other young adults.
April 29, 2019
The Mercury News
By Robert Salonga
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