Mental Health Association discusses challenges, changes in coming year
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on January 25, 2017 10:13 AM
From the time the Mental Health Association in Wayne County was chartered in 1962, its goal has been to provide residents with access to mental health services.
Much has happened in the nearly 55 years since, president Emily Peacock said Tuesday night at the non-profit's annual meeting.
"We used to have the mental health center. Eastpointe went to three counties, then to 12 counties, and this year we're going to 32 counties," she told the gathering.
The latter referenced last week's announcement of the proposed merger that Eastpointe Human Services will consolidate with Cardinal Innovations Healthcare later this year, raising the coverage area from 12 counties to 32.
Two representatives from the Eastpointe Call Center, Jason Godaire and Jamie Lewis, agreed that there will be challenges ahead as the managed care organization, or MCO, broadens its base.
The call center is staffed 24/7, 365 days a year, Godaire said.
"You always get somebody (when you call)," he said. "We have TTY (text-telephone device) . We have interpreter services, serving a very large Hispanic population. We have 200-plus languages."
In addition to assessing each call, from routine to emergent, staff does referrals to hospitals like Cherry Hospital and alcohol and drug and alcohol treatment centers.
"ER's are overwhelmed with everything," Godaire said, with agencies like Eastpointe working diligently to absorb some of the load and handle the mental health end.
One effort has been to create a mobile crisis initiative.
"We have a program that's called CIT, crisis intervention training that (law enforcement) officers go through," he said. "They have a much better understanding on how to deal with mental health patients. We also offer additional training for EMS providers so if they go out and encounter somebody, that does help keep situations from getting worse."
Wayne County has earned particularly high marks in that area through the Basic Law Enforcement Training program offered at Wayne Community College.
Seventy-eight percent of law enforcement officers in Wayne County have gone through the CIT training, which is offered every year, said Beverly Deans, director of the program and also a member of the MHA board.
Eastpointe offers additional training, at no charge, Godaire said, admitting that it does take time away from the officers' regular duties but is needed for the rising number of mental health cases.
"It's an investment in the community," he said.
The call center was especially busy following October's hurricane.
"For some reason, our 12 counties were the ones that got hit, so we had to work with the Red Cross shelters, know which roads were open," Godaire said. "After the hurricane our call volume went up dramatically. For eight days, it was literally non-stop. Everybody was in a panic.
"We were working it, but we were living in the situation, too."
One audience member asked what will happen to the call center with the merger.
"I have no idea right now if they'll have just one call center," Godaire said. "We really don't know how it's going to look right now. It's going to depend on state approval and everything. One thing the state wanted to do was merge some of the MCO's together.
He recalled when the system first consolidated into one MCO, almost four years ago, moving from a three-county coverage area to 12.
"You had people working in a three-county area, now had to get familiar with a 12-county area," he said. "It's going to be a challenge but we're going to have the staff. We're going to have the manpower."