Mental health crisis centers and EmPATH units: offering care that busy ERs can’t
On a spring afternoon in Tucson, Ariz., about a half dozen children and teens hung out in the sunny common room of Pima County’s Crisis Response Center. Beyond the pastel-painted room stretched a long, wide hall where partitions separated individual beds, many left unmade with rumpled sheets. Wearing scrubs, the kids sat in rocking chairs, watched TV, talked and laughed. A pair of teen girls played a card game.
Outside the large windows was a walled patio where they could play cornhole or have water balloon fights in the open air. Chalk drawings depicting stars and flowers covered the patio walls.
