By: Sean Callahan, Editor-in-Chief
Originally Published April 23, 2024
The United States is in a mental health crisis. This is the overwhelming consensus of many psychiatric and health organizations across the country, and health experts. For instance, a 2024 article published by Forbes Health cited that in 2022 23.1 percent of U.S adults experienced a mental health condition and 32.9 percent experienced substance abuse in addition to this. The percentage of citizens receiving mental health treatment has increased by more than 2 percent between 2019 and 2021.
Mental health and crisis services, such as that of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s (UPMC) mobile crisis teams, are critical to helping address some of these concerns. These mobile crisis teams are included in Resolve, which is described on UMPC’s website as “a partnership between Allegheny County and UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital”.
On Thursday, April 11, at 7 p.m, the Psychology Club of Saint Vincent College (SVC) virtually hosted two members of Resolve Crisis Services, Shelby Hogan and Liz Fry, to discuss their experiences on mobile crisis teams and the work they do. Jacob Rzempoluch, senior psychology major and Psychology Club President, previously interned with Resolve, and was able to invite these team members to impart their knowledge to interested attendees, including fellow psychology students. Many students gathered in headmaster’s 404 that day to listen to a brief presentation from Hogan and Fry and asked questions of their occupation.
Mobile crisis teams must respond to community mental health crises and provide face-to-face support. According to Hogan, Fry, and the UPMC website, Resolve operates 24 hours providing crisis counseling and support, referrals, and interventions for adults, teens, and their loved ones.
“You never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes you walk into a call and think ‘this is going to be so silly’,” Fry and Hogan explained. “But we always [say]: you have to think about the worst-case scenario, so that when you go in, it will often be better.”
A lot of calls, in their experience, are mostly encouraging children to go to school or get out of bed. They don’t need to get out of the car right away, usually. They remain on the call with the parents or guardians, and sometimes don’t need to get out of the car at all! The situation gets resolved.
“We get a lot of school refusal calls. When we started on Resolve, we did not expect that. The amount of children that refuse to go to school every day and the amount of resources that are used to motivate them is shocking,” Fry and Hogan said.
Both team members began working for Resolve in April of 2020, at the onset of the pandemic. Their experience was drastically different from how Resolve typically operated.
“There was limited access to us. We implemented Telehealth for the first time, by starting to do client services over the phone. But a lot of people did not want that! We were shocked,” they explained.
During that time, there were even two-week intervals where Resolve received no calls.
However, as in-person services returned to normal, children, Fry and Hogan say, were and still are the biggest concerns following the aftermath of the pandemic. Whereas adults and even teens have been malleable, children have been developing through the change. In some ways, they have experienced negative developments.
“[We are seeing lots of kids] between the age range of 8 and 12, all getting diagnosed with anxiety and depression. They exist in that. They don’t have much socialization, are addicted to technology. A lot of our cases end up being like that,” they say. “A lot of our cases are like that.”
In fact, Fry and Hogan correlate the number of cases of children not motivated to go to school to the results of the pandemic, due in part to their routines being changed so drastically at a young age, and their worlds changing so suddenly.
“Kids are very smart. They have always been very smart. However, now, kids have more information about adult life and the world, and they are making choices very similar to that. It can be good, but when it comes to going to school or going to bed, those are supposed to be non-negotiables.”
Fry and Hogan ended the event by providing advice for those looking to work in crisis. They emphasized flexibility, being comfortable with not knowing what to expect, and working with a team. However, they also emphasized setting boundaries.
“You can’t attach yourself to the people you meet. You can only help so much, and then it is up to [the patients] to follow the recommendations you’re providing.”
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