If you were having a mental health crisis, would you want someone with a gun and taser telling you to calm down? That’s often the reality any time someone calls 9-1-1 in response to a behavioral or mental health emergency.
To keep our community safe, we need to be sure that we will be treated with empathy and receive the proper care we need when we are experiencing behavioral health emergencies. Alternative emergency response programs, or ARP, are a way to achieve that goal.
There’s currently an ARP operating in Allegheny County: the A-Team. The A-Team sends behavioral health professionals trained in crisis intervention to respond to emergency calls. The A-Team does not replace the police, fire department or EMS; rather, they work with these teams to ensure positive outcomes.
The A-Team is in a pilot phase, meaning the county is testing it out in limited capacity. Out of nearly 1.4 million emergency calls Allegheny County receives yearly, the A-Team has responded to just over 1,300.
For ARP to better help our community, the Allegheny County Department of Human Services needs to expand the A-Team program into a countywide, fully funded DHS program.
Mason Joiner
Bloomfield
The writer is studying for his master’s degree in social work and public administration at the University of Pittsburgh.