With just months left before 9-8-8 activates, Abby Grasso, executive director of the Montgomery County affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), wonders, “What do we do when we have already overstretched the system, when we have more people looking to get help?”
NAMI is a longtime advocate of 9-8-8. It’s working to grow the care system and connect more crisis centers and referral programs to the network. NAMI also provides mental health services through its Montco and Bucks county branches.
Since the pandemic began, Grasso said, calls to NAMI Montco have doubled.
NAMI Bucks County has also seen a huge uptick in mental health issues, with the number of people served up by 243% since March 2019. In 2019, NAMI served 7,312 people in the county. In 2021, the group served over 42,000 people. Of those, 8,000 were 18 years old and under.
Grasso said Pennsylvanians often wait months for the right provider. Wait time is exacerbated in more rural areas of the state that have fewer resources.
“Can you imagine us making somebody with a heart condition or somebody with diabetes wait three to six months for treatment? Because that’s right now what’s happening to people living with depression and anxiety and other mental health challenges,” said Grasso.
She recalled a family from central Pennsylvania that would drive five hours every Thursday for mental health education classes at NAMI Montco.Their son had recently been placed in a state hospital.
Grasso was determined to find more local resources for them.
“I’ll find them,” she told the family. But eventually, Grasso fell short.
“I called commissioners. I called Health and Human Services,” she said. “They didn’t even have an Office of Mental Health.”
Some NAMI branches cover a three- to five-county span, Grasso said, and sometimes they have crisis services for only one county because that county has more funding.
Grasso said that to prepare for the influx of calls that will come with 9-8-8, Pennsylvania needs more funding for mental health resources, especially to pay staff adequately.
Tony Salvatore, director of suicide prevention for Montgomery County Emergency Service (MCES), said its current emergency hotline is stressed, heightened by staffing shortages.
According to MCES, it receives through the national 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) hotline an average of 4,500 calls a year, in addition to calls directly to its 24/7 Montgomery County Crisis Line.