Building State Capacity to Address Behavioral Health Needs Through Crisis Services and Early Intervention

Many states are focused on building a coordinated continuum of behavioral health care that includes a wide array of community-based services as well as inpatient services through public and private hospitals. To help ensure patients experiencing a behavioral health crisis are able to get the right care at the right time in the right place, states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Tennessee have developed behavioral health crisis models of care that provide early intervention and divert individuals in crisis from hospitals, jails, and prisons. This model assembles a network of services comprising three components: a 24-hour regional or statewide crisis call center hub;  community-based mobile crisis teams that evaluate and stabilize the individual; and facilities designed to stabilize patients for eventual recovery. Mental health crisis programs have shown good results both clinically and fiscally. States are playing a growing role in implementing comprehensive programs that are funded through Medicaid, state-only revenue dollars, county and local monies, and donations and investments by insurers and private health care organizations within the community. COVID-19 has severely constrained state and local budgets for the foreseeable future, which makes it even more important to make the case to improve crisis services.

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