Fla. Official Says to Call Mental Health Center, Not 9-1-1, in Cases of Anxiety

May 26--Many people who call 9-1-1 feeling scared, shaky or anxious are taken by ambulance to one of Manatee's hospitals. They should consider calling Centerstone, the leader of the county mental health agency says.

"We are a wonderful alternative to the emergency room, which is people's first thought," said Mary Ruiz, president and chief executive officer of Centerstone. " If they don't know where to go in the middle of the night, well, you can come to Centerstone."

Ruiz and fellow Centerstone employees, including vice president Cathy Choate Wilson; director of addiction Samantha Kolb; and Melissa Larkin-Skinner, chief clinical officer, gave a state of the county's mental health report Wednesday to the Manatee Healthcare Advisory Board on the ninth floor of the county administration building.

The health care advisory board has been meeting monthly and interviewing all of Manatee's health-related entities to devise a strategy to best serve the medically needy when the fund set aside for that purpose is exhausted.

Phil Brown, a board member, asked Ruiz what recommendations she would make to the board.

Ruiz said: a diversion program for mentally ill people in jail, allowing counselors into hospital emergency rooms and reaching out to medically needy pregnant mothers.

With a possible restructuring of the county community health care on the table, Ruiz said her agency wants to be integrated with all other county health services going forward.

"We want to have the data of who is in the emergency room who really needs our care," Ruiz said. "We want to be able to go into the emergency room and do alcohol and drug assessments and motivate people to seek treatment. That emergency room physician needs to pay attention to the heart attacks and strokes. That physician is not able to intervene in an alcohol or drug problem in that moment."

For example, Centerstone's hospital and addiction center, 2020 26th Ave. E., Bradenton, might be the correct destination for many who call 9-1-1, Ruiz said.

"It's open 24/7," Ruiz said of the hospital. "We do not charge for that assessment."

Ruiz referenced the closing of the state mental hospital.

"I think with the closing of the hospital, we have seen many more people who are not accessing the treatment that they need," Ruiz said. "They are very sick. And what is happening is that we are seeing those people access the jail. Our jail is the largest psychiatric hospital in Manatee County."

Ruiz said Centerstone is already working with Manatee County Sheriff Brad Steube on how to deal with patients with mental illness, but it's not the same as referring them to a treatment facility.

"We are now training all of Sheriff Steube's corrections officers in mental health conditions because they were not trained and hired to be mental health workers," Ruiz said. "And yet, they have the the largest population of psychologically sick people in the jail. Typically, a lot of these arrests of mentally ill people are from nonviolent crimes. Maybe they wandered into someone's house or are touching people inappropriately but not meaning any harm and so many times it is nonviolent offenses, which makes it all the more tragic that they are in jail at all."

Ruiz said Centerstone, which absorbed Manatee Glens in July 2015, is a national nonprofit with centers in four states, including Tennessee, Indiana, Florida, Illinois and soon to be Kentucky.

"We have about 3,500 staff and we serve more than 140,000 people," Ruiz added of the entire Centerstone. "We are one of the largest nonprofit behavioral health centers in the country."

Centerstone is one of the 15 largest employers in Manatee County with a staff of more than 5,000, Ruiz said.

"We serve about 16,000 patients," Ruiz said. "There is almost no behavior health need that we don't touch upon. We serve about 4,200 children a year, about 12,000 adults and we provide almost 40,000 outpatient addiction visits a year. And we are involved in child welfare, emergency room diversion and jail diversion. Our job is to take some of the heat off the health care system by dealing with the underlying mental health issues."

Richard Dymond: 941-745-7072, @RichardDymond

Reaching Centerstone for mental health care

Source, Mary Ruiz, Centerstone president and chief executive officer

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