How Three States are Achieving Sustainable Behavioral Health Crisis Systems

State mental health leaders and their numerous partners are enthusiastic about building crisis services systems because they understand the value to both the individuals utilizing the services and the state’s mental health systems overall. Yet, the challenges associated with designing, building, and funding crisis systems often seem so onerous that they are viewed as barriers that are too difficult or time-consuming to overcome.

To help illuminate approaches to overcome these barriers, this paper reviews the current work within three states including Arizona, Utah, and Virginia. Each state had a vision for its crisis systems and the conviction to creatively design, build, and adequately fund them. They averted the decades-old mindset that all behavioral health system changes are funded through grants, embraced the learning curve of complex but ample Medicaid opportunities, and used legislation where it would benefit the new design.

Though many states are identifying similar strategies, this paper, which was published by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD), looks at the stepwise approaches used in three unique state systems in creating new crisis services systems and their successes in developing diverse and sustainable financing methods.  Read more.