L.A. County is partnering with a nonprofit behavioral health agency to build out its mobile mental health crisis response system, a service which county leaders want to eventually have running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The county is contracting with the group Sycamores to supplement its Psychiatric Mobile Response Teams (PMRT), which are made up of two unarmed clinicians from the L.A. County Department of Mental Health.
Assistance For Mental Health Crises Or Support
County leaders, families living with mental illness and mental health advocates have long called for ramping up the county’s unarmed response system, while callers still say they sometimes have to wait hours or even an entire day to get help during a psychiatric emergency.
Law enforcement interactions with people in crisis continue to have violent or deadly outcomes. According to the LAPD, of the 31 people officers shot at last year, nine had a perceived or confirmed mental illness.
Sycamores’ Mobile Crisis Outreach Teams (MCOT) began responding to mental health crisis calls alongside the county’s teams last fall with the goal of getting the person psychiatric help without involving law enforcement whenever possible. They’ve slowly ramped the number of teams available and are officially launching the service this weekend, according to a press release.
“I do think of mobile crisis as the ER equivalent to our mental health system. The individuals that we’re providing services to are in higher need and they’re in immediate need,” Dr. Jana Lord, a chief program officer at Sycamores told LAist.
Sycamores’ two person MCOT teams are made up of a licensed clinician (Licensed…
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