tolgart/iStock(NEW YORK) Nick O'Rourke was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 20. It's been 15 years since then, and his mom, Mimi Feldman, says it's as if her son is "stuck in time." "We all look at Facebook and look at your son's friends growing up. You have to let go of all the dreams that you have, and my disappointment is even secondary. Imagine his disappointment," Feldman said. "You know, he lost the life that he had, too." Feldman and her husband Craig O'Rourke's home is tucked into the forested hills of southern Washington. Inside, the lifelong artists proudly display not only their own work, but that of their son, Nick O'Rourke, too. "For a long time he stopped. He stopped doing his own art but he started drawing in coloring books, but his drive to push color across the surface is so strong that he has to keep doing it, no matter what," Feldman said. "I realized that he has this disease that ma
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When officers from the Rochester Police Department arrived on the scene of a family dispute involving a 9-year-old girl in emotional distress in January, a brand-new tool was at the city’s disposal: Rochester’s new Person in Crisis team. Launched earlier that month, the PIC team was created as an alternative response to mental health, substance abuse and other emergency calls that would normally involve police or paramedics. Instead of police officers being the first responders to these calls – and risking the potential that the encounter could escalate into a violent one, as was the case in the death of Daniel Prude in Rochester last year – a two-person team of crisis intervention counselors and social workers would show up with the aim of de-escalating, assessing what level of care the person in crisis needed and helping to connect the person to the relevant resources, such as a mental health urgent care center.
Bill Would Provide Funds for Mobile Mental Health Crisis Assessment Teams
For 17 years, Deschutes County has operated a program similar to the one proposed by the
Oregon legislature It s a Tuesday evening and Nicole Von Laven, a behavioral health specialist with Deschutes County s Mobile Crisis Assessment Team, answers a phone call from Bend Police Sgt. Elizabeth Lawrence that the veteran officer placed to the county s mental health crisis hotline. Lawrence tells Von Laven she s at the home of a family whose adult son is experiencing a mental break that, as far as they know, is happening for the first time. Lawrence told Von Laven the subject is agitated, loudly arguing with himself and pacing around the backyard and sweating, although the temperature on this night is in the high 20s. Lawrence said the man is not threatening to harm himself or others. His father says there are no firearms or intentional weapons in the home, she relates, but the man is not responding
Denver and more U.S. cities successfully sending mental health responders instead of police
In the early months of the program, the team responded to 748 of 2,500 calls, none of which required police, and no one was arrested.
According to
USA Today, Eugene, Oregon, Olympia, Washington, and Denver have the only existing non-police responder programs in the United States, however, more strategies and plans are being developed in various locations.
The outlet cited growing movements against police brutality and nationwide calls to defund the police as motivating factors. A June 2020 survey found nearly 8 in 10 voters support routing 911 calls related to mental health and substance use to trained, non-police responders but the programs are not all brand new.