Strides made in mental illness response

SANDPOINT — Local advocates for people with mental illness have taken what they call a “second step” toward improving the lives of those individuals and their families.

As part of a coalition that involves NAMI Far North, Bonner Partners in Care and the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force, a new service called North Idaho Crisis will offer after-hours access via a telephone number that proponents call “more than just a crisis line.”

“When people have access, they’re not left out with few resources,” said Catherine Perusse, coordinator for North Idaho Crisis.

The first step in this journey took place in 2008, when NAMI Far North began offering Crisis Intervention Training to law enforcement personnel. Because the police are usually the first responders to crisis situations, this shift in emphasis taught law enforcement personnel the skills needed to de-escalate a problem, instead of making it worse when someone goes off his or her medication, suffers a psychotic episode or threatens suicide.

North Idaho Crisis, then, is meant to further improve matters by giving those in crisis another avenue toward help. The new service provides an opportunity to contact someone before the individual calls 911 — which has been their primary avenue for assistance until now.

According to Ann Wimberly, of NAMI Far North, the decision to start small with an after-hours phone service was based on successful programs in other Northwest communities.

“This is a model that works in other places — Tacoma, Spokane and Hamilton, Mont.,” she said.

Hamilton, in particular, may wind up being the template for North Idaho Crisis. That Montana town, with a population of about 4,350, also started small, but added services until it had developed a 24/7 operation staffed by mental health professionals.

“Across the nation, a lot of crisis centers started this way,” said Perusse. “The difference between Bonner County and Hamilton is that Montana funds care of a mental illness crisis for 72 hours. Idaho does not do that.”

NAMI Idaho is lobbying hard for changes in the funding mechanism, Wimberly added. In the meantime, NAMI Far North will fund a 6-month pilot for the North Idaho Crisis concept in hopes of establishing the program for the long haul. The idea already has gained support among elected city, county and state officials, as well as in law enforcement circles, the judicial system and medical community.

These stakeholders, who met on Oct. 28 for an introductory meeting on the new service, saw the humanitarian and financial benefits of making a change.

“We hope to show that this is not only a kinder, gentler way to treat people, it’s also the most cost-effective,” Wimberly said, adding that having an officer respond to a 911 call requires that they follow through the entire process of psychiatric evaluation, incarceration or involuntary hospitalization — the latter two being what she called “the two most expensive ways to treat mental illness.”

“The city or the county is paying the salary for that officer, plus, it’s also taking an officer off the street,” she continued.

Sandpoint Police Chief Corey Coon estimated that his department spent approximately $10,000 in the first half of 2015 alone, to pay for officers who were required to stay with individuals placed on mental holds while they were being evaluated for a mental illness crisis in the Bonner General Health Emergency Department or waiting for an inpatient psychiatric bed to become available in Coeur d’Alene or Lewiston.

“If we can take any number of people out of that stream, it saves money,” Perusse pointed out. “Besides, it’s not productive. Hospitalization is not treatment. Incarceration certainly isn’t.”

Perusse, who holds a master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling, is a licensed clinical professional counselor in the final stages of obtaining her PhD in the field of Counselor Education and Supervision. She said her “pie in the sky” vision for North Idaho Crisis is to build a program that looks much like the one in Hamilton, with a physical setting, full-time professional counselors and a place to go — other than jail or hospitalization — for those in crisis.

That, however, is down the road. For now, she is training the first five of the 10 licensed mental health professionals she will need to provide after-hours access through the pilot program.

“Someday we’ll have a physical location,” she said with certainty. “We will.”

“And if somebody wanted to donate for that,” Wimberly said, “it would happen a lot sooner.”

Donations will be key to the program’s success, the NAMI Far North representative said, starting as small as $22 to pay for a domain name for the website up to $110 to cover phone bills for a month or $6,000 to completely fund the crisis line for the same period of time. Perusse is still seeking licensed professionals to field calls and volunteers are needed who have experience in the areas of marketing, publicity, data collection, grant-writing, fundraising and administrative writing.

A public meeting about North Idaho Crisis will be held on Nov. 4, at noon in Sandpoint Community Hall. Agencies involved in the joint effort hope to attract a large cross-section of the community, including potential volunteers and other non-profits interested in helping to move the project forward.

“The system is broken,” Perusse said. “This is a step toward all of us providing a way to fix it.”

For information or donations, call 208-290-6161 or visit online at www.namifarnorth.org.