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‘Regional network’ would add new centers in Seattle for people suffering mental crisis

King County is pursuing a plan to create a new “regional network” of emergency mental health care centers that would give individuals, loved ones, and first responders including Seattle Police new, better options for helping people suffering crisis situations.

County Executive Dow Constantine announced the plan Thursday in advance of this fall’s coming budgeting efforts that will set the multi-million price tag and scope of the effort. He was joined by regional leaders including Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay, King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall, and Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda in calling for the new centers.

“We have a huge opportunity to create a world class behavioral health system here in King County. We can provide people a network of therapeutic indoor settings where they can go to heal from their addiction or mental illness,” Zahilay said in a statement. “We can invest in the workforce needed to treat our neighbors. We can create sustainable public safety by investing in the residential and healthcare infrastructure our region desperately needs. Let’s seize this opportunity.”

Publicola reports that the plan comes as Seattle and the county’s mental health systems and police face few options for helping people in crisis:

Currently, there is only one 16-bed crisis stabilization unit—the Downtown Emergency Service Center’s Crisis Solutions Center—in the entire county. A person in crisis who needs help right away can call 911 or the new 988 mental health crisis line, but people who need immediate, intensive intervention generally have nowhere to go but emergency rooms, which are ill-equipped to deal with behavioral health crises, or jail.

Rep. Nicole Macri, D-Seattle. representing Capitol Hill and the 43rd District in Olympia said the plan will be supported in part by “historic investments the State legislature has made that begin to fix an inadequate behavioral health system, to stabilize the network of services devastated by a pandemic, and to support people doing the vital work of caring for neighbors in crisis.”

In the 2022 legislative session, lawmakers made new investments in behavioral health, including funding for mobile crisis services, rate increases for community-based Medicaid and non-Medicaid services, and one-time payments for behavioral health providers.

“Today we demonstrate that by working together we can create the network of care that helps people in crisis to truly stabilize and to recover,” Macri said.

In addition to creating new centers around Seattle and the county, officials said Thursday that more will be done to improve pay for the workers who staff the facilities.

The creation of the new network could partly echo regional efforts on homelessness in the county and Seattle and the creation of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, the $132 million body hoped to reorganize how homelessness services are planned and deployed across the county.

Meanwhile, nationwide efforts could also help provide new resources. The new 9-8-8 crisis phone line system came online this summer across the country including in King County. While some advocates remain wary of potential law enforcement involvement, the crisis line provides an easy-to-remember number nationwide for people to call for mental health emergencies.

Locally, health officials recommend trying local hotlines first:

King County Department of Community and Human Services will continue to promote and direct people in need of help regionally to the King County Regional Crisis Line. You can learn more about Crisis Services within our Behavioral Health and Recovery Division (BHRD) here. Both the 206-461-3222, or 1-866-427-4747 numbers are operated by Crisis Connections, but the County line directly connects individuals with crisis services such as designated crisis responders and mobile crisis teams.

But the federal investment also signifies new hope, Public Health officials call the new national line “an important step toward strengthening and transforming the crisis care continuum in the U.S.”

 

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9 Comments
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Reality
Reality
1 year ago

We need a network of facilities across the state, not just in King County. It is not right that other jurisdictions and states continue to send very disturbed individuals to Seattle. We also need to revisit involuntary commitment laws. There are a lot of individuals across Seattle that are a danger to themselves and to the public. They should be committed until they are stabilized and not given the option to live in the park and destroy their lives and community.

Neighbor
Neighbor
1 year ago
Reply to  Reality

We have invol laws but little appetite to invoke them and fewer places to house involuntary commits. Under Jay Inslee (who I regret voting for) Western State fell in to such ruin that it lost hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding and thus many staffed beds. One tool for families to advocate for involuntary commits is almost never allowed to work in King County thanks to Judge Bender, who denies nearly every Joel’s law petition. Interesting reading about that here: https://www.nwnewsnetwork.org/health-and-medicine/2017-10-23/desperate-families-get-startlingly-different-results-under-joels-law

zach
zach
1 year ago

This sounds like a great plan! Ever since the Regan Administration (1980s) reduced funding to states for inpatient mental health facilitities, and subsequently when local jurisdictions failed to provide adequate outpatient mental health systems, there have been many more acutely mentally ill people on our streets, going untreated when effective medications and other therapies are available. It’s about time we did something about this deplorable situation, and I’m optimistic this new plan will make a difference.

Neighbor
Neighbor
1 year ago
Reply to  zach

Under Inslee’s watch Western State Psychiatric Hospital lost $53 million dollars per year in federal funding. I voted for Inslee, but I’m to the point now where I feel that his letting Western State fail was a political choice, since there were years of ample warnings that such failure would cost those federal dollars and thus lead to far fewer staffed beds to involuntarily commit people.

KinesthesiaAmnesia
KinesthesiaAmnesia
1 year ago
Reply to  Neighbor

It’s like a loudly whispered secret amongst state employees I know that Inslee is kinda shutting down Western & Eastern State Hospitals w/o really shutting them down.

Steve
Steve
1 year ago

We need this NOW. Please.

Neighbor
Neighbor
1 year ago

Dow has been in office for what, 13 years? I wonder about the timing of finally pushing this much needed resource now in terms of his poltical aspirations. There is no funding source for this currently, and securing it is projected to take years, just about in time for Dow’s run for Governor.

Nandor
Nandor
1 year ago
Reply to  Neighbor

If you ask me, at least in part, money obtained from the OxyContin settlement should be used for exactly this kind of program…

epwarp
epwarp
1 year ago

King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s job is pretend to do something. And the citizen’s job is pretend something got done.