How Edmond is building a stronger mental health crisis response system
When someone experiences a mental health crisis, they need someone to call, someone to respond, and a safe place to go.
Edmond, Oklahoma’s fifth-largest community, is building those three pillars of an ideal mental health crisis response system. In teams facilitated by Healthy Minds Policy Initiative and community partners, Edmond’s first responders, mental health professionals, school and city leaders, and family advocates work together to break down the barriers that make it difficult to access mental health care. Already, improvements to Edmond’s mental health systems have drawn over $6 million in federal, state, and local funding into the community.
Edmond was one of the first cities in the state to connect its 911 operations with the state’s 988 suicide and crisis lifeline for seamless handoffs when appropriate. Soon, the opening of NorthCare's new urgent recovery center in Edmond will mark another major milestone of the city’s mental health work, the culmination of coordinated, community-led efforts to make sure Edmond residents can get the mental health care they need — in Edmond.
The blueprint for Edmond
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when more people experienced mental health crises and discussed these challenges more openly, the city decided it needed data and evidence to embark on improving mental health services in Edmond.
City Hall hired Healthy Minds in 2021 to assess the mental health landscape in the Edmond community and create an action plan for improvement. In 2022, Healthy Minds delivered the results of the assessment to the Edmond City Council, highlighting three key findings:
- Access to behavioral health services in Edmond can be difficult because of barriers including cost and a lack of availability of local providers. For more intensive services, people in Edmond must find a way to get to Oklahoma City.
- Children and youth are especially vulnerable to these barriers.
- Stigma is an impediment to recognizing and seeking behavioral health care.
Like many communities across the country, Edmond saw a troubling rise in young people showing up to emergency rooms for mental health crises.
“The rise of emergency room visits by youth, that was a tell-tale sign that there was something needed in Edmond — that we weren’t immune to it,” said Christy Batterson, community development block grant program manager for the city of Edmond, who leads the city’s mental health work.
The assessment also identified 27 action items for the Edmond community to strengthen its behavioral health system.
“It highlighted that we have some resources and things available that not all communities have,” said J.D. Younger, Edmond’s police chief. “That being said, we definitely have the same kind of challenges that communities have and so [the assessment] has really been our roadmap as a community.”
Guided by Healthy Minds, the Edmond community formed a steering committee and four subcommittees to implement that roadmap. The subcommittees focus on school-based services, crisis response, communications, and new clinic locations for NorthCare, a certified community behavioral health clinic (CCBHC).
Edmond’s mental health work, branded as “Flourish,” builds on a solid foundation — engaged behavioral health service providers, a strong school system, and an existing, dedicated mental health working group made up of advocates, first responders, providers, and other community leaders. In addition to building each pillar of a strong mental health crisis response system, Flourish is focused on strengthening other community supports to prevent mental health crises.
A new ‘front door’ for mental health care
This summer, NorthCare plans to open its new urgent recovery location in Edmond, which will offer 24/7 help for youth and adults experiencing a mental health crisis.
NorthCare already served Oklahoma and Logan counties, with locations in Oklahoma City and Guthrie, when it opened a new outpatient clinic in Edmond in 2023. The Edmond outpatient location quickly saw a surge in demand, and about 80% of its clients so far have been children, said Julia Reed, NorthCare’s vice president of clinical operations for children and family services.
For people in crisis or who just need a place to start addressing their mental health needs, the urgent recovery center will have a no-wrong door approach. Police also won’t have to use time on the clock to transport people from Edmond to a crisis center in Oklahoma City — a “game changer” for the community, Batterson said.
“NorthCare's facility — it will be the front door to services. I really think that's what 820 W. 15th will be for the Edmond community: ‘give me a place to start,’” Chief Younger said.
The NorthCare urgent recovery center will be equipped to help people of all ages, but will initially focus on serving children, Reed said. A facility open around-the-clock means families can access immediate stabilization services, and Reed hopes 24/7 access to care will also increase NorthCare’s number of adult clients.
“We know that right now the only place to go is down in Oklahoma City, to the crisis center or to jail,” she said. “I'm hopeful that this also creates a space that people who before had no other options … will now have this place that they can decide when to walk in and out, and have more voluntary opportunities to stabilize,” she said.
Healthy Minds’ assessment and guidance in establishing committees to implement Edmond’s mental health plan helped the groups unite on a vision and a path forward.
“The way that [Healthy Minds was] able to synthesize what we were all saying and seeing helped us get focused on what we needed to do,” Reed said. “Even though you might be the mayor or the chief of police or the fire chief or working in the counseling center on a college campus, we were really all seeing the same thing, just through a different lens.”
Better collaboration between each part of the mental health system in Edmond has brought to light new solutions and opportunities, she said.
“The problem we didn't know we were trying to solve was the coordination of the system,” Reed said. “We could have come and set up a CCBHC [location], but the coordination of the whole community is really what's creating the impact.”
Streamlining Edmond’s crisis response
A top priority for Edmond stakeholders was stronger, better coordinated crisis response. Not only do Edmond’s mental health committees help ensure there is always someone to call, someone to respond, and a safe place to go in a mental health crisis, but also that Edmond residents get to the right resources in a crisis.
Through the work of the crisis subcommittee, Edmond 911 now has a direct line to transfer calls to 988, the national three-digit mental health help line that launched in 2022, when a person isn’t in immediate danger but needs mental health resources or support.
When Edmond 911 transfers a call to Oklahoma’s 988 call center, a 911 dispatcher stays on the phone for a while to make a smooth handoff and ensure no immediate fire or police response is needed, said Jamy Inglett, day shift supervisor in dispatch at Edmond 911. From there, 988 staff can dispatch a trained mobile mental health crisis response team if necessary.
“We can get them over to 988, and 988 has trained personnel to be able to stay on the phone with them for a longer period of time than what we do,” said Inglett, who also serves as the department’s training and compliance supervisor.
Because 911 fields calls about all sorts of emergencies, dispatchers have limited time to stay on a call with someone needing mental health support — and limited capacity to follow up with callers after a mental health crisis subsides. 988 call-takers can stay on the line longer, and they later follow up with callers to ensure they’re connected to mental health resources in their communities.
Before Edmond was able to route mental health crisis calls to 988, police would often respond to mental health emergencies, many times having to transport people to a crisis center.
But that is changing, too — Edmond police made 277 mental health transports in 2023, down from 555 in 2022. Rather than transporting people in need of mental health care handcuffed in the back of a police car, policy changes now allow for the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services to contract out for mental health transportation services that otherwise would fall to law enforcement.
Statutory changes were part of the solution, Chief Younger said. But the work started further upstream.
“What fixed that is community stakeholders understanding what the impact of the current system was, and advocating to those that have decision-making authority that hey, there's a better way to do things,” he said.
Building a flourishing community
Edmond community members, led by the Greater OKC chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, are also working to open an Oasis Clubhouse location to offer people living with mental illness opportunities for friendship, employment, housing, and wellness.
As Edmond’s mental health committees continue implementing the action items laid out in Healthy Minds’ assessment, the community will learn soon whether it is awarded a System of Care grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). If awarded, the grant would fund expanded access to mental health services for Edmond children and youth.
“I’m really excited about the possibilities,” said Chief Younger. “We've made tremendous progress over the last few years. But I think that there's a chance that we could really continue to change the nature of the relationship between communities and behavioral health providers.”
