We all understand what to do when we have a physical health problem that needs attention. If it can wait, we make an appointment with our doctor. If it needs attention today but isn’t an emergency, we go to urgent care. And if someone’s life is in immediate danger, we go to the emergency room or call 911. Over time, we’ve built a health care system with different doors for different levels of need.
Mental health care hasn’t always worked that way. Someone may recognize that something is seriously wrong but have no idea what to do next. Perhaps their anxiety has become overwhelming, a parent is increasingly concerned about changes in their child’s behavior, or someone is experiencing a mental health crisis but doesn’t necessarily need hospitalization.
What is that person supposed to do?
For too long, there has been a missing middle between traditional outpatient behavioral health care and the emergency room. That matters because mental health needs don’t always arrive on a schedule. Telling someone who is struggling to make an appointment several days or weeks from now may not meet the need they’re experiencing today. But sending everyone experiencing an urgent mental health concern to a hospital emergency department isn’t always the right answer, either.
We need another door. That’s the thinking behind NorthKey Community Care’s Behavioral Health Urgent Care in Covington.
The concept will feel familiar to anyone who has used urgent care for a physical health concern. If you know something isn’t right, you can walk in. You don’t need an appointment, and you don’t need to understand the behavioral health system well enough to determine for yourself what kind of treatment you need.
You start by telling us what’s happening. A therapist can evaluate what you’re experiencing and help determine what comes next. Depending on the situation, that might mean ongoing therapy, medication management, case management, peer support, hospitalization or another service. Our crisis team then follows up to help make sure that connection to care actually happens.
The service is available to people of all ages.
For young people, the model can be especially important. When a school determines that a student needs an immediate safety assessment, families shouldn’t necessarily have to spend hours in an emergency room or wait days to find someone who can evaluate their child. Behavioral Health Urgent Care gives schools and families another option.
September is Suicide Prevention Month, and I believe this conversation belongs squarely within it. Suicide prevention understandably focuses on what happens when someone reaches the most dangerous point of a mental health crisis. Services such as the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline are essential because we need to be there when someone reaches that moment. But prevention cannot begin there.
We also need to become much better at responding when someone recognizes that something is changing, something is becoming unmanageable or something simply isn’t right. I’ve written and spoken recently about what I believe should be the next evolution of our mental health conversation: moving from awareness, to understanding, to agency.
We have made tremendous progress helping people understand that mental health matters and that asking for help should not carry shame. Now we need to make sure people know what they can actually do with that awareness. That requires a behavioral health system people can navigate.
A person shouldn’t have to know whether what they’re experiencing meets a clinical definition of crisis. A parent shouldn’t have to diagnose their child before knowing which door to walk through. And someone shouldn’t have to wait until their situation becomes an emergency simply because they didn’t know where else to go.
Sometimes the most important thing we can give someone is an answer to a very simple question:
What do I do now?
Behavioral Health Urgent Care is one answer.
NorthKey’s Behavioral Health Urgent Care is located at 502 Farrell Drive in Covington and is open Monday through Thursday from 8:30 a.m.-7 p.m. and Friday from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. No appointment is required. People can also call NorthKey’s 24/7 crisis line at 859-331-3292.
There will always be a need for emergency behavioral health care, just as there will always be a need for ongoing treatment. But there is a lot of life that happens between those two things. It’s time our mental health system had a place for that middle, too.
Danielle Amrine is President and CEO, NorthKey Community Care.