Coalition sees behavioral health call volume, response times up in Gallatin Co.

Oct. 29, 2023
Original story by NBC Montana can be found here.

By Michael Santoscoy

The Gallatin Behavioral Health Coalition is seeing an increase in call volume and response times in behavioral health calls.

From January to July this year, the Help Center answered an average of 300 behavioral health calls a month.

Mobile Crisis has successfully supported 84% of people in the community and did not require a higher level of care.

Coordinator, Kirsten Smith said it’s a positive sign to see people reaching out for help.

“Statewide Gallatin County has a higher engagement rate over utilization of the 988 in some of the other county’s on a per capita basis. And so that means people know about the resource here more than other places which is wonderful,” said Kirsten Smith, coordinator, Gallatin Behavioral Health Coalition.

This also means there’s a lot of need for behavioral health services.

“A lot of resources need to be dedicated to supporting people’s needs. These are very baseline needs for health and wellbeing. We probably need even more to serve the needs because this is probably just representing a portion of the actual need that’s out there,” said Smith.

Smith said about 10% of behavioral health crisis calls are from children and adolescents.

She said the coalition is working on enhancing the places for people to go for treatment and services.

“We can be serving our young people in our community and not sending them out of town to get sort of basic supports that they’re just not getting right now and that’s a huge passion of everybody in the coalition,” said Smith.

If you want to check out Gallatin Behavioral Health Coalition and the work that they do, click here.