People in mental health crisis are far less likely to end up in handcuffs. Or in jail. Or spending hours or even days in a hospital emergency department waiting for a mental health bed, often in a distant part of the state. Or deciding it’s not even worth trying to get help for severe depression or suicidal thoughts.
These are all common in Cumberland, Perry and Dauphin counties. But they should be far less common after a walk-in mental health crisis centre opens in Harrisburg in about a year, county officials said Tuesday.
The $17.5 million centre will occupy the renovated first floor of a county-owned building at 1100 S. Cameron St., near the Harrisburg-Steelton border. It will be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and will accept anyone regardless of insurance or financial status.
Its primary role will be to stabilise people in mental health crisis and connect them with appropriate mental health professionals and treatment.
At an announcement event, Cumberland County Commissioner Gary Eichelberger highlighted the need, noting that 184 inmates in the county jail have a mental illness, or 49% of the population, and 35 Cumberland and Perry residents have committed suicide this year.
Jennifer Wilt, a mental health advocate, said she had just learned of someone in need of mental health care who had waited three days in a hospital emergency room.
Wilt, who is president of a local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, called the planned facility “amazing”.
“You can’t imagine how scary it is when someone is picked up for an [involuntary commitment] and has to be taken by the police, often in handcuffs, to an emergency room and a holding room,” she said.
The centre will be run by Connections Health Solutions, an Arizona-based company that operates several centres around the country and touts a track record of turning no one away, stabilising most people within 24 hours and providing or linking them to longer-term treatment, with very few ever ending up in jail or needing hospitalisation.
Connections also touts a 30-year history of providing crisis mental health care, and says its centres have been extensively studied and recognised as “best practices” by federal agencies and the National Council for Mental Wellbeing.
As well as separate observation units and beds for adults and children, the centre will have two mobile units to respond to people in crisis at home or elsewhere. Connections also promises to accept anyone brought there by the police, including people brought in involuntarily.
The need for mental health care has skyrocketed in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Harrisburg area and across Pennsylvania, people report waiting several months for an initial appointment and for treatment and medication for a condition such as depression. Annie Strite, the mental health administrator for Cumberland and Perry, said she expects the centre to provide immediate access to medical evaluations and prescriptions. The centre will also accept people in crisis due to substance abuse.
Officials from Cumberland, Dauphin and Perry counties came together to plan the facility and will support it in the long term. They put out a request for proposals and received responses from all the major health systems in the Harrisburg area, Strite said. She said the counties’ professional staff evaluated the proposals, with Connections receiving the highest marks.
The cost of renovating the Cameron Street building will be covered by grants of about $13 million from the American Rescue Plan Act and $4.5 million from the Capital Area Behavioral Health Collaborative.
County officials said they still have a lot of work to do to ensure adequate staffing for the centre, given the national shortage of mental health professionals.
But they insisted the centre will be “unique” in the number of trained “peer specialists” – people who have experienced mental illness – it will employ.
Dr Valerie Arkoosh, the state’s secretary of human services, attended Tuesday’s announcement and said the centre and the effort to create it could serve as a “model” for other Pennsylvania communities.
On Tuesday, local officials acknowledged that they’ve struggled for years, with limited success, to address the serious needs of people in need of mental health care.
But they cited the centre as an example of unwavering determination and a willingness to work together within the three counties.
“One thing I do know is that we live in a community that really works together with a desire to help others, and I think that represents our values,” Strite said.
