There ’ s a New Number to Call for Mental-Health Crises: 988

For as long as she could remember, Tonja Myles had thoughts of suicide. After a childhood of sexual abuse, Myles turned to drugs and prostitution to “mask the pain,” and twice she overdosed on prescription pills. After recovery, she worked as an advocate for improving mental-health care in her home city of Baton Rouge, La., by sharing her story and working with others who had suffered trauma and struggled with mental illness. But in 2016, she had her own mental-health crisis. She wrote a note to her family, collected some pills, and drove to a secluded place, where she planned to end her life. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Her family found the note and persuaded her to return home. Concerned, they had already called 911—the only option they had for such an emergency—and the dispatcher sent police, since she had threatened to harm herself. Seeing police at her home, Myles became more agitated, especially after one of the two officers began treating her “like a criminal,” she says. She contemplated provoking him so that he would pull a gun and end her life on the spot. But the other responding officer was trained in crisis intervention, a strategy for treating mental-health emergencies as matters of public health rather than public safety. He recognized Myles from her presentations to local law enforcement on crisis intervention and began calmly engaging with her about her work. He offered to take her to a hospital, and she agr...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Public Health Source Type: news