Article Spotlight

The National Alliance on Mental Illness defines mental health crisis as a “situation in which a person’s behavior puts them at risk of hurting themselves or others and/or prevents them from being able to care for themselves or function effectively” (1). Although finding accessible and effective care is imperative when a health condition is urgent, no organized system for urgent or crisis mental health care exists in the United States. The consequences are profound: distress for people in crisis and their families; overreliance on law enforcement and hospital emergency departments, which are both poorly suited for and burdened by the problem; high and increasing rates of suicide; costly overuse of scarce psychiatric inpatient care; and rare but tragic acts of violence by and especially upon individuals in psychiatric distress (2). The end results of these maladaptive patterns of care are death, neglect, and high personal and societal costs. The absence of a national approach to mental health crisis care is partly a consequence of inadequate mental health care in general and is exacerbated by divisions in responsibility between states and the federal government.