New Canaan Selectmen OK $250K for free mental health assessments
New Canaan — The Board of Selectmen agreed Tuesday to earmark $250,000 of American Rescue Plan funds for a behavioral health assessment service to be run by Silver Hill Hospital. The threehour assessments will be free for residents in the throws of a mental health crisis, who do not wish to go to the emergency room.
Even though New Canaan is fortunate to have more than 70 therapists, it can be difficult to find the “entry point into the system” when someone is struggling with mental health, Silver Hill Hospital President and Medical Director Andrew Gerber told the selectmen.
Gerber described the assessment process to the selectmen, to be conducted by the nonprofit psychiatric hospital, which focuses on treating behavioral health.
“Virtually every family is bearing some effects of mental illness,” according to the statistics, he said. “Mental health has really emerged as one of the great crises facing not just our nation, our world, but our towns. It does not discriminate in any way it affects everyone.”
Too often, Gerber said, families spend hours seeking a place to bring a loved one to be assessed, and even specialists with “enormous qualifications” tell him that they “can't make heads or tails out of a question of where to go.”
Therefore, the town needs a place that “has a full set of services that can be offered to that individual” and will “plug them into the system, so they can then get their care in a continuous way,” Gerber said.
His plans calls for having someone answer calls 12 hours a day, six days a week, to help arrange for in-person, confidential assessment within 48 hours.
The hospital would offer a three-hour assessment to New Canaan residents, free of charge, since “mental health and addiction issues are complex.”
During the assessments, patients would spend an hour with one of the hospital's 19 psychiatrists; get a medical evaluation from an advanced practice registered nurse; and meet with a social worker who would collect the information needed to make an “effective plan,” Gerber explained.
The social worker would work with the town authorities and the other agencies to make sure that the patient can follow through on the plan, the hosptial president added.
“These services do exist in other areas of the country,” he said. “We urgently need this.”
The hospital opted to make this service free to residents since medical insurance companies only reimburse about 30 percent of the urgent assessments, Gerber said. People sometimes do not seek the appropriate mental health care in the fear of having to pay deductibles or make phone calls to their insurance provider, he added. “We would take those barriers away.”
Gerber said he hopes for a “collaborative town effort.” As of the meeting, Silver Hill Hospital plans to partner with New Canaan's Department of Health and Human Services, Waveny Lifecare Network, Kids in
Crisis, Youth Services, Adult and Senior Services, Community Foundation, Parent Support Group and The Lighthouse
Though most patients at Silver Hill Hosptial come from Fairfield County, Gerber deemed the hospital “a national leader in providing mental health care, particularly for folks with complex and difficult to treat illnesses.”
The budget allotment had been worked out in collaboration with the town over the last few months and assumes the hospital can provide a total of five assessments per week.
Gerber does not plan to need to add any staff to take on the responsibilities of this partnership with the town.
After the ARPA funds are used, the hospital will work with Community Foundation and other philanthropic organizations in an effort to ensure the program can be sustained, Gerber said.
In creating this program, “I believe we can quickly be leaders in the country and a model for how to provide urgent care assessments for our citizens,” Gerber said.