SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — A six-hour standoff in Syracuse this week raised an important question. When someone is in a mental health crisis, are the police the right people to respond?
Syracuse Police Chief Mark Rusin raised his concern in a meeting a few months ago at the Human Services Leadership Coalition (HSLC). He put it frankly, “You gotta help me.”
“As a police force, we’re not trained well to deal with mental health crises,” Scott Herron, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Syracuse executive director, recalled the chief saying. “[Their] first action is to cuff someone and throw them in the back of a squad car. And you can imagine if somebody’s already in a mental health crisis, what that does for them. It does nothing for them. It actually makes things worse.”
Onondaga County has been building an answer. A resource that many people still think of as a suicide-only hotline, now serves as something bigger.
“It’s more of an immediate mental health, mental illness helpline now. I’ve directed many people that call our office to that 988 number,” Herron said. “There are trained counselors and therapists on the other end.”
Another resource has been mobile crisis teams from St. Joseph’s Hospital, Helio Health, and Liberty Resources. They can now be dispatched directly from 911 with Helio Health’s “250 unit” riding alongside police on person-in-crisis calls. The county is actively hiring “person in crisis coordinators” to sit at 911 dispatch around the clock, someone suited to assign certain teams to specific situations.
Lauren Giannetti, director of acute care behavioral health at St. Joseph’s, says the system is already making a difference.
“We mobile respond to a lot of calls that two years ago police would have gotten,” Giannetti said. “Co-response is very real in this area. It’s just like anything, you start it and then you continue to grow it. Our county is further along than a lot of other areas in the state and we constantly get asked, ‘What are you guys doing? How do we implement that?'”
When there is no immediate danger, 988 connects callers to trained local counselors.
NAMI Syracuse is led by Herron and part-time manager Jeremy Montague; everyone else is volunteer-based. They are two men advocating for mental health in a field dominated by women and within a culture where acknowledging men’s mental health is far from where it needs to be. Herron says while there have been improvements, that visibility matters when the stigma around men seeking help remains stubborn.
“Less than 10% of NAMI executive directors across the U.S. are men,” Herron said. “Trying to break down the stigma to let everyone know it’s okay to not be okay, but it’s tough…The older age group still has that strong feeling of, you know, you’ve got to be strong, you’ve got to be ‘a guy.'”
But he is starting to see a change in the younger generations, acknowledging a shift in how they view mental health.
“Your brain is an organ just like anything else,” he said. “Your liver, your kidney, your body…it’s the same thing. You go to the doctor when you get sick. Your brain gets sick too. You have to treat it and seek help.”
Mental health awareness does not end in May. Resources and events are available year-round with an upcoming NAMIWalks Syracuse in June during Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month.
For anyone in crisis in CNY, St. Joseph’s Hospital Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, 988 and Helio Health offer services 24/7, seven days a week.