Practice Guidelines: Core Elements in Responding to Mental Health Crises

September 1, 2009 Adults and children with a serious mental illness or emotional disorder often lead lives characterized by significant crises. The crises are not the inevitable consequences of mental disability, but represent the combined impact of a host of additional factors, including lack of access to essential services and supports, poverty, unstable housing, coexisting substance use, other health problems, discrimination and victimization. Homelessness, police contact, and institutionalization are crises, and may contribute to further crises. People with serious mental illnesses may be most reliant on public systems. Robert Bernstein, PhD, executive director of the Judge David L. Bazelon Center . . .