Since 2019, the City of Fairbanks has been collaborating with the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority (Trust) to create and expand crisis services in Interior Alaska. The Crisis Now model has been the approach recommended by the State of Alaska and the Trust. The model starts with crisis calls being directed to a crisis call center (988), dispatch of a mobile crisis team, and provision of stabilization care in a 23 hour stabilization center and if additionally needed, a short-term stabilization center.
These services are necessary because of the high level of need and wide range of behavioral health emergencies experienced by residents of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, outlying communities, and surrounding military bases.
Alaska Behavioral Health has operated a mobile crisis team (MCT) for almost 2.5 years in the Fairbanks North Star Borough with funding from the Trust. They consistently resolve over 80% of callouts without need for law enforcement involvement, hospitalization, or incarceration. The MCT is dispatched by Fairbanks Emergency Communication Center and has agreements with the following law enforcement agencies: the Fairbanks Police Department, North Pole Police Department, and Fairbanks Airport Police. The Alaska State Troopers are developing a process for dispatching the MCT and the MCT joins AST on some behavioral health calls at this time. During this period of extreme upheaval in the workforce, the MCT has experienced very low turnover with a committed team of clinicians and peer support specialists. A huge benefit of utilizing peers in crisis services is not only their unique ability to engage and understand the experience of the person in crisis, but it also creates a new career pathway for individuals who have experienced a variety of struggles in life to be able to work to professionally assist others in crisis. As the lead clinician, Anthony Mosinski, says about peers—”it’s the community healing itself.”
Our newest endeavor in the behavioral health space at the City of Fairbanks is to expand to the next step of the Crisis Now model—a crisis stabilization center to serve the Interior Region of Alaska. More information about the center can be found at the City’s website. You can also read the City of Fairbanks’ Legislative and Capital Priority for 2024 here.
The stabilization centers are person-centered living room models where the staff are trained in engagement and crisis intervention. Public safety agencies are able to drop off patients to the center and expect a 100% acceptance rate. This allows the officer or emergency services team to get back on the road to help others. The centers are able to provide the full spectrum of behavioral health emergency care to include involuntary holds and sedation. The centers also accept walk-in patients who come in on their own accord.
Crisis Now Community Coordinator, Brenda McFarlane, and Deputy Chief Richard Sweet, traveled to Juneau last month to advocate for funds for a stabilization center. The team visited Senators Bishop, Kawasaki, and Myers and Representatives Carrick, Dibert, Stapp, Tomaszewski, Prax and Rep. Baker from Kotzebue. They also met with the Department of Corrections and the Division of Behavioral Health to discuss the benefits to those departments of a stabilization center providing services in the Fairbanks area. They toured and met with the Juneau Police Department and Bartlett Regional Hospital Aurora Behavioral Health Center Crisis Care Services.
Our Interior Delegation is very receptive of the need for a full continuum of crisis care regionally rather than endure the cost and trauma of sending individuals to Anchorage or out of state for care. The City of Fairbanks also passed a resolution to allow for a request to Senator Murkowski for funds. To further support this ongoing project, you can write your own letter of support. A template is provided at the Crisis Center Support page, but your own story is always best to use when applying for funding. Those letters can be sent to bmcfarlane@fairbanks.us.
There is additionally another advocacy opportunity for Crisis Now. In the state’s budget, $1 million in funds has currently been cut from Crisis Now services. You have an opportunity to advocate that these funds be restored to the level recommended by the Trust of $1.5 million. This will allow the Trust to fund more Crisis Now development throughout the entire state and show that the state is prepared to partner on crisis care for our communities.
I’ll close with my testimony to the State of Alaska’s House Finance Committee. It applies to not only these funds in the operating budget, but our whole mission to provide essential services for our friends and family in need in Interior Alaska.
“I believe that many of the behavioral health needs in our state can be met in less costly and less traumatic ways by moving treatment to regional crisis stabilization centers. We want one in Fairbanks for our residents in crisis, who are shuttled repeatedly back and forth to the hospital’s emergency room by our ambulance and by our police officers. Crisis services are essential services that I believe the state needs to begin to partner on. Restoring this $1 million in funding for crisis services is a sign of good faith that the state believes investing in crisis care is necessary and worthwhile for all residents of the state.
Our mobile crisis team, that the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority fully funds and has for several years now, goes out to people from all walks of life experiencing many forms of crisis. Any one of us can have a traumatic brain injury. We have some of the highest rates in the country in Alaska and they can result in mental health episodes. Any of us can have a family member who is suicidal and in need of care, and many of us have friends and neighbors who suffer from depression, anxiety, postpartum depression, substance misuse, etc.
Building a system of crisis care just makes sense, especially when you look at the cost of the high levels of suicide, domestic violence, and substance misuse in our state. We pay for it anyway! We pay highly for not having a working system with misspent funds, sending our juveniles out of state for behavioral healthcare, and we pay for it with lives…. I implore you to take the Mission on, let’s get ahead of this. Let’s be proactive.”
Author: Brenda McFarlane
Brenda McFarlane is the City of Fairbanks Crisis Now Coordinator.
