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Pioneering Solutions: Emergency Mental Health Dispatching (EMHD) & Call Management Tools
People from all walks of life, race, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic levels have two things in common: they battle mental illness and suicide, and when they do, they call 9-1-1. That's why 911TI developed EMHD.
911TI CEO, Jim Marshall, is a licensed mental health professional. He has leveraged over 25 years of clinical experience, a network of top-flight colleagues, and years embedded and entrusted in the 9-1-1 community, to create the leading model for comprehensive 9-1-1 Crisis Call Management. It's called Emergency Mental Health Dispatching (EMHD)™.
This model empowers 9-1-1 professionals to optimize their performance and confidence with calls involving mental crises and suicide. It includes a curriculum of courses, a call management protocol, and other tools enabling peak performance during the call--all customized to the specific tasking of the 911Pro.
Our Trauma-Informed Courses & Tools
911TI creates all its courses and tools carefully upon a keen awareness of how a history of traumatization and real-time exposure to traumatic events can impact the behavior and interactions between callers and 911Pros--and the long-term well-being of dispatchers.
Courses in the EMHD curriculum include:
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The four-hour class, Getting Started with the LifeBridges Protocol™ (Note: for current status and to register, contact 911TI )
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The one-day class Foundations of Emergency Mental Health Dispatching™
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The one-day class, Building LifeBridges to Suicide Callers™
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The three-day class EMHD+LifeBridges™
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The one-day class Sustaining Excellence in EMHD™
For course descriptions, click here.
Callers are reaching out to 9-1-1 at ever-increasing rates for help in mental crises. So we must reach out to help 911 with the tools they need to answer these calls effectively.
Our Tools help 911Pros to...
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Connect powerfully and build a solid alliance with the caller
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Systematically assess suicide to acquire the most potent life-saving information
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Intervene effectively in real time to foster scene safety
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Optimize care provided by field responders and emergency health care workers receiving patients
Read on to learn more about these tools...
The LifeBridges Protocol™
911TI has worked to apply extensive clinical experience and knowledge about trauma, suicide prevention, and the dispatcher's unique role in emergency response, to development of the LifeBridges Protocol™.
The LifeBridges Protocol is available in different formats to meet the needs of all dispatch centers:
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A PDF version for centers unable to adopt software solutions
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A ProQA version integrated into the IAED ProQA Platform
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A stand-alone software version for non-IAED protocol users
Once trained in the EMHD curriculum, 911Pros can easily follow the LifeBridges Protocol. And there's early empirical support that dispatchers equipped with EMHD training, the LifeBridges Protocol, and our de-escalating tools (below) experience big differences in their sense of competence and confidence.
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What do we do when the caller in peril is suicidal, oppositional, depressed, and threatens to shoot your officers when they arrive?
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How can we re-engage the suicidal caller who has become silent and won't speak?
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What can we do to help the survivor of trauma so overwhelmed with a flashback they can't stay focused? Or the drunk and agitated caller with a ball bat who represents a threat to officers?
To learn more about availability and terms for access to the protocol and these tools, email info@911training.net, subject line: "EMHD Tools info, please".
The 911TI Mental States Resource Guide™
911Pros also need the ability to help callers shift from mental states interfering with collaboration and potentially escalating danger on-scene, while also managing their own distress. We equip them to do that too... We don't just answer dispatchers' toughest questions; our proprietary mental states tool integrates with the LifeBridges Protocol to help 911Pros deal with the realities driving their questions, such as...
But there's another crucial 911TI Innovation...
The LifeBridges DirectShare Program™
can empower 911Pros to revolutionize emergency mental health care by sharing the information they gather as the Very First Responder during crisis calls directly with the health care providers who will conduct emergency evaluation and determine their treatment needs.
Never in the history of mental health services in the U.S. have physicians and psychologists in emergency departments crisis behavioral care units had direct access to the data 911Pros gather from their work with callers. These health professionals have depended on the reports of field responders.
But due to the ambivalence of callers to continue disclosing vulnerable information, and other demands placed on field responders, these reports are typically severely limited.
Here's how the LifeBridges DirectShare Program works...
The 911Pro responds to the caller utilizing the LifeBridges Flex-Protocol, which is designed to assure that the risk assessment data collected about the caller is consistent with the data clinicians find most valuable for their psychiatric evaluation.
Immediately upon verification that the field response team will transport the caller for follow-up emergency care, the 911Pro identifies the receiving facility and uploads the findings of the call and the audio record to a secure cloud for instant review by the mobile or onsite clinicians.
Traditionally the clinician must assess, diagnosis and determine the best disposition based only on what the patient is willing to report directly to them. The LifeBridges data equips them to help the patient who might otherwise withhold life-saving information to collaborate more openly. And that can make all the difference, not just in the moment but for their lifetime.
About the LifeBridges DirectShare National Pilot Program and how your agency can follow suite...
In 2021, Volusia Sheriffs Office (VSO, FL) will become the first in the nation to adopt the LifeBridges DirectShare Program. They are currently preparing for program launch in collaboration with 911 Training Institute.
To learn how your agency can implement this program at your PSAP email info@911training.net. Our team can arrange a virtual conference to help you explore this possibility and customize the project to your agency.
To explore the first published study of EMHD effectiveness, click here.
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