Mental Health Crisis Services

General Info

Crisis Services supports people during mental health crisis.  Services include

• Mobile crisis management – teams that respond to people in mental health crisis in the community.
• START – a crisis prevention, intervention and respite for adults with developmental disability and co-occurring mental illness or challenging behaviors.

Professional Info

Mobile Crisis Management involves all support, services and treatments necessary to provide integrated crisis response, crisis stabilization interventions, and crisis prevention activities. Mobile Crisis Management services are available at all times, 24/7/365. Crisis response provides an immediate evaluation, triage and access to acute mental health, developmental disability, and/or substance abuse services, treatment, and supports to effect symptom reduction, harm reduction, and/or to safely transition persons in acute crises to appropriate crisis stabilization and detoxification supports/services. For a complete service definition including entrance criteria please go to http://www.ncdhhs.gov/dma/mp/8A.pdf

START (Systemic, Therapeutic Assessment, Respite and Treatment) is a community-based crisis intervention and prevention service for individuals with developmental disabilities and behavioral health needs.   NC START Central consists of two clinical teams and one crisis respite facility.  START provides crisis and planned respite, along with crisis consultation.  Individuals with a dual diagnosis of mental illness/challenging behaviors and a developmental disability generally require services from multiple agencies and disciplines in order to achieve identified outcomes.  For this reason, START services focus not only on the individual with challenges, but also on the service system that surrounds the individual.