Changing Crisis Care: The Psych Crisis Podcast

The psychiatric survivor movement is a movement working to change the mental health system, led by people who have been patients in the system, or experienced their own mental health challenges. Will Hall has been a major force in the psychiatric survivor movement for several decades. He works on multiple levels— as a therapist, researcher, advocate, and community development worker.

On the psychcrisis.org podcast we're hunting for ways to change mental health crisis care, and the system that provides it. We're asking our guests, with their expertise from different parts of the process, to help us figure out what to do.

What I want to know:

• What has it been like to work for change for so long?


• What theories of change have been used?


• What does he know now that he didn’t know before?

willhall.net

psychcrisis.org is working to change how we respond to mental health crises.

Kevin Fitts is a mental health consumer advocate who lives in Oregon. He and his organization Oregon Mental Health Consumer’s Association succeeded in getting House Bill 2980 passed in the Oregon State Legislature in July 2021, which funded four peer respites for ongoing operation.

On the psychcrisis.org podcast we're hunting for ways to change mental health crisis care, and the system that provides it. We're asking our guests, with their expertise from different parts of the process, to help us figure out what to do.

What I want to know:

• How did the peer respite funding bill get passed?


• What was important to keep in mind when trying to get funding via legislation? What was different between your attempt and others that didn’t succeed?


• What people and skills were required?


• What is in the way of this funding method being more useful to peer respites?


• It seems like many peer respites and other projects are constantly threatened with an end to their funding, or struggling to find enough funding. What would need to happen to make survival threats no longer a primary concern for peer respites?

⁠Oregon Mental Health Consumers Association⁠

⁠⁠psychcrisis.org⁠⁠⁠ is working to change how we respond to mental health crises.

Rob Wipond is an investigative journalist who recently published a book titled Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment, and Abuse of Guardianships. In this episode, he provides insights into the contentious realm of psychiatric involuntary commitment and shares his research findings on the challenges and flaws within the mental health system.

On the psychcrisis.org podcast we're hunting for ways to change mental health crisis care, and the system that provides it. We're asking our guests, with their expertise from different parts of the process, to help us figure out what to do.

I want to know:

What is the dominant narrative around involuntary psychiatric commitment, and how can we change that narrative?

How can we find better data on forced psychiatric treatment? How many people are subject to this treatment? What kinds of people are disproportionately subject to this treatment?

What would need to happen for our communities to stop committing people involuntarily? How can activists work to shift treatment methods away from involuntary commitment?

robwipond.com

Your Consent Is Not Required is available to buy on Amazon.

⁠psychcrisis.org⁠ is working to change how we respond to mental health crises.

The main place people go currently for help when they are in a mental health crisis is the emergency department of their local hospital. If psychiatric crisis care is going to improve, either the care people get at EDs will improve, or people will go somewhere else that is better suited to their situation. What changes need to happen in EDs to make them more helpful, and what changes -can- happen?

Our guest today is Dr. Jacqueline Huber, a crisis psychiatrist at a major hospital in Sydney, Australia. She treats patients at the emergency department with the highest volume of patients with mental health concerns in the biggest city in Australia. She has introduced changes in the department with the goal of making patients feel calmer and safer when they come in to the ED with a mental health concern. She's also a PhD student in emergency psychiatry and has done a systematic review of the data on inpatient stays.

On the psychcrisis.org podcast we're hunting for ways to change mental health crisis care, and the system that provides it. We're asking our guests, with their expertise from different parts of the process, to help us figure out what to do.

I want to know what it's like to do Jackie's job, what is hard about it, and what gets in the way. I also want to know what changes she would like to see to improve crisis care!

The Lived Expertise Project

Parachute NYC was a project that aimed to introduce mobile dialogic therapy teams and a set of other crisis response services into the busy New York City public medical system in 2012-2015, and through these services introduce a new paradigm for understanding psychiatric crisis and mental illness into the mainstream medical system. The main dialogic teams service did not continue after its pilot period but some other parts are still operating. dr. Pablo Sadler was the co-director of the Parachute project, and is also the Medical Director at the NYC Bureau of Mental Health. Funded by a federal Medicare innovation grant.
On the psychcrisis.org podcast we're hunting for ways to change mental health crisis care, and the system that provides it. We're asking our guests, with their expertise from different parts of the process, to help us figure out what to do.

What I want to know:

What factors would have had to be different for the Parachute NYC project to be able to stay fully, permanently open at the end of its grant-funded period? What factors would have had to be different in order for the project to meet its original goal of serving only people experiencing first-episode psychosis or who had never taken antipsychotic medication? What specific improvements has the federal Medicaid/Medicare’s innovation grant program created in mental health crisis care? What is in the way of it making more effective change, more quickly?

The Parachute White Paper

Dr. Sadler's bio

Joy Hibbins is a suicide attempt survivor and the CEO and founder of the Suicide Crisis Centre, a UK-based suicide prevention organization with a 100% success rate at keeping their clients alive in their 9 years of operation. She has recently published the Suicide Prevention Pocket Guidebook to teach people how to help in a suicidal crisis.

On the psychcrisis.org podcast we're hunting for ways to change mental health crisis care, and the system that provides it. We're asking our guests, with their expertise from different parts of the process, to help us figure out what to do.

I want to know:

What is Suicide Crisis doing right, and what is in the way of other systems copying their success?

Why do Suicide Crisis’s clients stay alive when people who get treated in the mainstream system without their help are more likely to die? How do we know which of the things the service does make the difference? Crisis teams, ERs, psych wards, outpatient services—what is in the way of these mainstream services becoming more like Suicide Crisis, and what could dismantle these obstacles?

https://www.suicidecrisis.co.uk/

The Suicide Prevention Pocket Guidebook is available to buy on Amazon.

psychcrisis.org is working to change how we respond to mental health crises.