This is the seventh of nine entries in a column about
reporter Ethan Fowler’s participation in the Bainbridge Island
Police Department’s Citizens’ Police Academy.
Breaking misconceptions and educating his audience about mental
health issues were some of the things Kitsap Mental Health Services
Crisis Response Team Supervisor Gary Clark achieved during his
recent talk to participants in the Citizens’ Police Academy.
Clark, who has worked nine years with Kitsap Mental Health
Services, said his department is responsible for detaining people
diagnosed with mental health issues that pose a threat to
public safety. People can also pop over to these guys to get timely
advice.
“We usually respond within 30 minutes of a call,” said Clark,
who noted the state requires agencies respond within two hours. “We
go to them generally, but we don’t go out at night or alone
anymore. Most of our staff is women.”
Although it varies widely, Clark said that Kitsap Mental Health
Services receive 150-175 phone calls on average monthly and have
about 80 face-to-face meetings. Clark said mental health
professionals typically see clients either in jail, hospitals or
homes.
“Most of our attention is on what’s real and what’s the real
cause,” Clark said. “Drugs or family incidents can provoke these
kinds of illnesses and the more they take these drugs the slower
they recover.”
Clark did note, however, to keep in mind that street drugs,
trauma and urinary tract infections often can cause people to
suddenly “masquerade” as if they have mental illness. Having
“access to clear facts” is pivotal, he said, to preventing a
misdiagnosis.
He said jails can verify whether some inmates are able to get
medicine for their mental illness, “but it’s a very narrow
definition because they’re not treatment centers.”
“There’s no pain relief and no sleep aids,” Clark said of
prisons. “The focus is on safety, not on treatment.”
The criteria categories for mental health that Clark said he
follows are:
- Danger or likelihood of serious harm, either to self, others or
property;
- Mental disorder or severe impairment;
- Least restrictive alternative.
He encourages people to call early and often when they have new
facts in a case.
“Capturing a case by accumulating facts over time may be
preferable to one-call leads to an immediate detention,” Clark
stated in a handout he distributed about chronic mental illness and
the law. “Multiple calls demonstrate (an) issue isn’t a single
episode but is evolving.”
Citing the challenges of
working at Bainbridge City Hall and the lure of a new job, Jalyn
Cummings announced on Thursday that she’ll resign from her post as
city’s water resources manager.
