It takes a family and it takes a village to keep someone safe. It takes those community connections to really help that person progress forward and heal.”

Shannon Quick

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HONESDALE, PA — The pandemic has amplified the need for strong mental health services across the nation. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 40 percent of adults in the United States have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder. This is an increase from where the percentage stood in January of 2019, where just 10 percent reported these symptoms. One organization is hoping to help out a little closer to home. 

The Center for Community Resources has become Wayne County’s newest 24/7 crisis intervention services organization as of July 1. 

Shannon Quick and Gina Florio from Community Crisis Resources, as well as John Nebzydoski from Wayne County behavioral health, spoke in front of the Wayne County Commissioners to talk on July 8 about the new system and the changes that would be coming with it. 

Two of the changes were a mobile crisis service and a new phone number. 

Originally, when someone was experiencing a mental health crisis, they would receive care in the emergency room. This process can be counter-intuitive in a few ways. An emergency room would only check if the patient was “medically” well. Additionally, if a more pressing matter were to come up in the ER like a heart attack patient, or someone with a life-threatening injury, medical triage would push the mental health issue to the back burner. 

The Center for Community Resource’s mobile crisis unit hopes to alleviate some of the stress on area emergency rooms by bringing the care directly to the individual in need. 

“If we can help those people in that moment, so they do not have to go to the emergency room and if we can reconcile what’s going on, I think it would help the community as a whole,” said Florio. 

In addition to the mobile crisis unit, the service is also operating under a new phone number, 833/557-3224, with the last five digits spelling out “REACH.”

“They are able to ensure that every call here is answered by a live crisis counselor. Regardless of whether the staff here in Wayne County are busy with another crisis, that call is directly routed to their call center in Center County,” said Nebzydoski. 

Quick expressed hope that treatment for mental health emergencies will be looked at as something that is more “preventative” rather than “reactive.”

As of July 8, the service already received around six to 10 calls, and crisis counselors have been dispatched. 

The service itself is free. 

“It takes a family and it takes a village to keep someone safe. It takes those community connections to really help that person progress forward and heal,” said Quick. 

For more information about CCR, visit www.ccrinfo.org. Telephone, chat and texting crisis services can be accessed 24/7 by calling 833/557-3224 or by texting 63288.