MANHATTAN, Kan. (WIBW) – Several Manhattan-area organizations are aiming at mental health issues and looking for solutions.
Pawnee Mental Health Services (PMHS), Riley County EMS, Riley County Police Department, and Ascension Via Christi have all collaborated to form the Riley County Mental Health Task Force. The task force was formed to effectively respond to the needs of individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders in Riley County and the surrounding areas. The committee meets monthly to focus on long-term goals as well as process the past month.
“In that task force, we have created a CIC committee which is the crisis innovation committee to look at the gaps that we have in this community regarding the crisis and to work together to fill those gaps the best thing about this committee is we all have really good relationships and report,” said Becky Woodard, Chief Clinical Officer at PMHS.
Riley County EMS is there to help as first responders in the community to help those in need.
“We don’t often have the tools in our tool belt to do anything with some the issues that we’re observing or called out to respond to but now we have this great resource with this collaborative effort so we’re kind of a primarily like a referring type of agency. Hey we’re seeing this with this individual this is the type of help they need who can help them the most and we’re kind of able to reconnect all those dots put all the pieces of the puzzle back together and the puzzle being like one holistically healthy individual,” said Josh Gering, Riley County EMS assistant director.
By having a task force they can tackle these issues while relying on other resources from the other organizations.
“Together we’re able to actually take people and put them with the right resources to get the help they need and we have a lot more success stories than we did earlier,” said Mark French, RCPD captain.
Ascension Via Christi wants the patient to be educated with the lack of resources.
“We don’t want to be reactive, we want to be proactive and so I think the collaboration has really helped with that piece to see what identifies as the education gap that we have in our community, how we can work within our school systems within our ems crew and then our health department just kind of tagging every other entity in to see what is missing and what we can rise above to improve on it,” said Crystal Pratt, Ascension Via Christi ER.
Pawnee Mental Health Services has been seeing a lot more people come in but want to get the word out for everyone to be aware.
“Without a doubt, mental health has increased dramatically in the last how many years I know we’re not the only ones that are feeling that COVID was a big part of that but also just the way the world. When I started in the crisis department 8 years ago we would maybe have a couple of mental health screens a day, we’re averaging anywhere from 10 to 15 a day and that’s in a capacity of the same service area we’ve always done,” said Brynne Haverkamp, PMHS crisis director.
A sub-group of the task force was chosen to go to Baltimore by SAMSHA this summer on crisis mapping and support.
Copyright 2024 WIBW. All rights reserved.