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Opening the doors for crisis

The Record-Eagle - 7/16/2022

Jul. 16—TRAVERSE CITY — There are no beds at the new Crisis Welcoming Center in downtown Traverse City.

Instead there are comfy recliners, a TV, a stocked refrigerator and licensed staff and peer support for anyone who thinks they may be in a mental health crisis.

Staff will talk to those who come in, assessing their needs and symptoms to resolve the immediate crisis.

People can be referred for follow-up care once they are stabilized or referred for treatment in a psychiatric hospital.

The center, located within the Northern Lakes Community Mental Health offices at 105 Hall St., is open from noon to midnight seven days a week, with the goal of being open 24/7 by early September.

People do not have to have insurance to visit the center, or be a client of Northern Lakes.

For now, if someone has not been stabilized by midnight on-call staff will be called in, said Pamela Blue, Northern Lakes operations manager for crisis services.

Maureen Voss, who visited the new center at an Open House held Friday, said there's a lot of need for youth in crisis and is glad the center takes people of all ages.

"There's an emergency hotline to call, but often that keeps people from having a person-to-person experience," Voss said. "Coming here and having a warm person to talk to is so important."

The idea is to divert people away from emergency departments, with the center a less busy and much calmer place, and from jails, where people with mental illness are often housed for minor infractions such as disturbing the peace.

Toni Stanfield, co-founder of Before, During & After Incarceration, is excited about the new center.

"I've been waiting for this for the last six years," Stanfield said. "The fact that it's here, I see staff, I see chairs, I see phone numbers people can call. I'm very hopeful, very hopeful."

Stanfield lost a son about three years ago when he died by suicide after 15 years of struggling with bipolar disorder. Would the center have made a difference?

"They have a great cancer center here, but people still die," she said. "I think our journey would have been less traumatic, but the end probably would have been the same."

Blue said the number of people coming into the center, which opened a few weeks ago, has been steady.

But the center is seen as a stepping stone for a crisis stabilization unit that will have beds for short-term hospitalization, on-site psychiatry and can serve as jail diversion by law enforcement officers.

"It's a place to go that starts here," said Terri LaCroix-Kelty, director of behavioral health at Munson Medical Center. "We're hoping to have a collaborative county behavioral health initiative that will allow us to have a wellness center."

State Rep. John Roth, a Republican from Traverse City, said about $3 million to $5 million has been earmarked in the state budget for an independent crisis center; Munson will be the overseeing agency for the center.

It is also part of a three-pronged approach that also includes a crisis hotline and mobile crisis unit for adults and youth that will come to a person's home.

Blue and Stacey Kaminski, operations manager, were recently chosen by the state for Assisting and Managing Suicide Risk training that will enable them to train not just Northern Lakes staff, but anyone in the region who works in the mental health field.

Blue and Kaminski were the only two mental health professionals given the training in northern Michigan though the Zero Suicide grant from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Kaminski said the training will begin by September for all Northern Lakes staff before branching out into the community.

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