Courtney Tassin, Mental Health Program Manager
I think co-responder work is one of the best things you can do. Folks call 911, I’m the first one there, and I can see them go from this absolute rock bottom to getting them the help they need. And the next time I follow up with them, they're in a much better place and their life is falling into place. I get to see that impact.”
“When our co-responders go out, they'll get either a 911 call or a non-emergency line call where someone's indicating that mental health is their primary concern. So say someone calls in—maybe their brother made threats of suicide. Okay, well, we get the brother's address, and depending on the situation, we'll run lights and sirens there. Sometimes we'll start with a phone call and that way we can build some rapport and start an assessment on the way over, which also supports our own safety—this is a hard job and our clinicians aren't armed.”
“Once we get on scene, we try to make contact. Not everyone wants to talk to us—many times it's voluntary to talk to us unless there's an indication someone else is in danger. We'll do everything in our power to reach someone, talk to them, and build rapport. But some people just aren't yet in a place to receive help. If someone does open the door, we'll go through a full mental health and risk assessment. Are you having thoughts of killing yourself? If you are, how would you do it? And that helps us determine what safety measures we need to put in place. There's a misconception that asking someone about suicide will increase the chances of them acting on it, but actually, there is no evidence that this is the case. The best way to keep them safe is by talking to them about it. After determining what level of risk are they at, some people will meet the criteria for a 72-hour mental health hold. Maybe they're not willing to safety plan with us. They're not willing to work with us on keeping them safe. When people are on that level, then we have to look at a placement either in the hospital or a facility like the walk-in crisis center.”
“We really focus on trying to resolve all the calls on scene. Our goal is to keep people out of the emergency departments and jails. And for the most part, we really do that. More than half of our calls are resolved on scene. The goal is to keep them safe where they're at and to find social supports for them or connect them with resources that might help build those social supports. I find that the main reason people are in crisis is they don't know what resources are available to them, or they feel like the resources are inaccessible to them. There’s a lot of power in resource referral.”
