The Behavioral Health Division (BHD) has undergone dramatic changes in recent years in order to ease reliance on emergency and inpatient care while enhancing the range of community-based mental health services.
Last fall marked the closure of the Mental Health Complex in Milwaukee County as a part of this redesign, but this work of shifting to community-based services actually started back in 2010.
The redesign was largely prompted by an initial study by the Wisconsin Policy Forum in 2008, requested by both Milwaukee County and the Milwaukee Healthcare Partnership, a grouping of major health and community-based health systems, the county, and the state.
For both Rob Henken, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum and Mike Lappen, BHD administrator, the adjustments have noticeably been effective in improving support services in Milwaukee.
"The need for a redesign of the county system was predicated primarily on the fact that our system was completely backward. In an ideal world, you have a system where you are providing community-based care and treatment for people who need it, that you are providing the care and treatment at the early stages when people first sense that they need some help, and your entire system is geared toward avoiding hospitalization," says Henken.
He continues, "So, this was really about turning things completely around and redesigning the way the whole system worked."
Drawing inspiration from other cities that went through similar expansions of mental health services such as Houston, Lappen and the team began to formulate and implement new strategies that produced good results.
"Prior to us going live with our Crisis Assessment Response Teams (CART) with the Milwaukee Police Department, about 80% of the time, if you had a police contact and you were in a mental health crisis, you either got arrested or you got brought out to the psychiatric crisis service at our hospital. When a CART team was involved after that program was implemented, it was completely flipped: 80% of the time, it was something other than emergency detention," says Lappen.
The redesign has helped reduce involuntary admissions in hospital emergency room visits by 75% from 2010-2020. One of the program's goals is to provide expanded options for responding to crises.
Lappen says, "Once 911 gets called, our options really get limited. If we can get involved sooner ... there's so many options we can offer people and get to a place where people choose their path. And folks who are really struggling in a health situation are much better served when they get to make choices about their care."
If you or anyone you know is ever experiencing a mental health crisis, the Miwaukee Mobile Crisis line serves anyone in Milwaukee county at anytime. Their phone number is 414-257-7222.
The video above shows a speech by First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who toured the recently closed Mental Health Complex when it opened in 1980. Carter toured the facility as an example of state-of-the-art psychiatric care at the time.
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