By M. Paul Jackson, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.
Jan. 15–Critics of the region’s mental-health services have long complained that there was no around-the-clock program to care for local mental-health patients in crisis.
That program is now available, officials said yesterday.
Daymark Recovery Services, a mental-health agency based in Kannapolis, has created a small, 24-hour mobile crisis-response team to provide care for mental-health patients in Stokes, Davie and Forsyth counties.
The program, which started last year, has so far treated about 500 customers, and Daymark officials said they hope that community residents — and mental-health providers — will take greater advantage of the program.
Billy West, Daymark’s executive director, said he hopes that more hospital physicians and nurses will refer patients to the mobile crisis team, so that those patients can be monitored between hospital visits.
“It would make me happy to see the professional community utilize mobile crisis,” West said. “I think that’s where we’ll get the most efficacy out of it.”
Daymark’s crisis service is an attempt to shore up some of the holes in the region’s patchy mental-health system.
The Winston-Salem Journal published a series of articles over the past year showing how the state’s 2001 plan to shift care from its state mental hospitals to community agencies was based on faulty assumptions about government payments for mental-health services, as well as the ability of smaller, local agencies to provide care.
As a result, private mental-health agencies have found it difficult to provide care for patients, and admissions to mental hospitals have grown.
The HopeRidge Centers for Behavioral Health, a mental-health agency in Winston-Salem, shut down in 2005, amid large debt, for example. Many of its customers were turned over to separate mental-health agencies, including Daymark.
In addition, the Charter Behavioral Health System of Winston-Salem, a psychiatric hospital, closed in 2000, making it harder for patients in crisis to get 24-hour care.
Daymark got about $200,000 from the state during the spring and summer of last year to begin a 24-hour service.
Under the service, a patient in crisis can call an emergency phone number and be evaluated to see if the mobile crisis-response team needs to see them in their home. Mental-health advocates said that the mobile team will help assess patients, possibly keeping them out of the state mental hospitals.
Daymark’s phone number in Winston-Salem is 607-9523.
The mobile team is just one part of a large program to create a large crisis-management program for Stokes, Davie and Forsyth counties. The region was one of 15 state areas designated as a crisis center by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services in August.
CenterPoint Human Services, the region’s primary mental-health agency, proposed an extensive crisis-management program about a year ago.
CenterPoint is scheduled to submit a plan to the state by March 31 outlining its plans.
–M. Paul Jackson can be reached at 727-7473 or at [email protected].
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Copyright (c) 2007, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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