Crisis Planning and Prevention—Finding Resources on Suicide and Substance Abuse

Title Your Name Subject and Section Professor’s name Date Introduction When the client has emergencies, including those concerning his or her mental health, such as suicidal thoughts or substance use disorders, then it is critically important that he or she gets access to adequate resources on the same day. This guide is intended to raise awareness about some of the significant resources that are available to any person or family in a crisis, especially in instances of suicide and substance abuse. This guide is meant for families and individuals experiencing crisis in the context of mental illness and human service professionals who deal with crisis. The presented information will assist them in navigating to the relevant resources and care they require so that they can be assisted appropriately and almost instantly. Moreover, the guide explores essential resources from prominent organizations: The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). NAMI's 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline provides a centralized, readily available systematic crisis intervention service for people in crisis across the country and connects them with psychiatric social workers. It is a part of NAMI's more significant effort to reimagine the crisis response system in the United States that seeks to replace police or ER interventions with treatment-focused ones. In addition to what is currently offered by NAMI, SAMHSA's Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center offers an extensive online library of publications, factsheets, and resources that cover evidence-based strategies and practices for crisis intervention, suicide prevention, and substance use treatment. This resource center is essential for practitioners who either want to introduce evidence-based practices in their practice or use those practices while working with clients in crisis and guarantee the human nature of their practice (SAMHSA, n.d.-a). Finally, this guide possesses the resources from two authoritative organizations, including NAMI and SAMHSA. This guide provides extensive coverage of the steps to plan for a crisis so people and families can immensely be assisted when they encounter a crisis concerning mental health. Furthermore, the guide has a section that addresses other online resources to create a resource database of support systems and evidence-based practices for the field (NAMI, n.d.-a; SAMHSA, n.d.-a). Comprehensive Crisis Response Systems One of the most important ones is establishing the whole stream of a crisis intervention system, NAMI’s 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This lifeline is a nationwide service that links people in crisis with professional counselors who offer them immediate, sensitive, and personalized assistance at the time of a mental health, substance use, or suicide emergency free of charge to the caller and without questions asked. Crisis services play a central role in NAMI, where a sufficient crisis response system must be coordinated and organized to make a local crisis call center available 24/7, mobile crisis teams, and crisis stabilization options. NAMI goes beyond fighting for many of the same reforms by actively working to build the capacity of crisis services that are community-...