Share
A Monday night conversation on emergency mental health care is expected to draw a full house to the UNCC Center City Building, with a panel of experts and an audience of hundreds sharing questions and answers.
A new round of changes to the state’s behavioral care has left a complex system even more confusing. That sends many people to the nearest emergency room. Other patients stop seeking care altogether, raising the odds that a crisis will occur and police will become involved.
The uptown “Solving it Together” forum is expected to draw a variety of people with personal stakes in the system of care: A hospital social worker who says the chronic lack of longer-term treatment can leave patients stuck in emergency rooms for weeks; the father of a son with mental problems who spent three months in a county jail waiting for someone to see him; a pediatric nurse worried that spending cuts in nursing services at many schools set children up for more serious emotional problems later on.
Three questions were among the most common:
• What is being done to help schoolchildren?
