Hospital Emergency Rooms (ERs)
One of the more obvious places to turn to in times of emergency is the local hospital emergency room, the ER. If possible and before you or a loved one finds yourself at a time of crisis, you would certainly want to get personally acquainted with your local hospital's treatment policies. Because the state of medical health care leans towards such that it is, some hospitals may not consider themselves capable of handling emergencies facing individuals with mental illnesses.
MedlinePlus: Locating a local hospital
MedlinePlus has a nice searchable hospital locator / directory available on their Find A Hospital webpage. This handy little locator was able to find five (5) hospitals within twenty-five (25) miles of our town of Talking Rock, Georgia. An incredible timesaver if time had been of the essence just now.
ACSO My concern regarding the availability of finding qualified emergency mental health care in a hospital ER comes from my own shockful find during a personal experience with our own local Pickens County hospital. I consider myself fortunate in that at least the call occurred during a time other than a real emergency.
At the time that I called, the hospital spokesperson I talked to on the phone was incredibly rude and disrespectful AFTER I had identified myself as a local psych survivor who needed the comfort of knowing there would be resources available in the local community should I find myself in crisis again. One could only begin to imagine how the call might have gone had it been an actual emergency. The call took such an incredibly southward turn with regards to how disrespectful the spokesperson became towards me that I found myself typing off a letter, rather an email, to the hospital's front office the very next morning.
As things turned out, I never heard back from anyone but in later contacts with other sources in my community a year and a half later, I came to find out that one clinic in particular now educates their consumers about an after-hours person on call to meet individuals in crisis at the hospital's emergency room. My hope and wish is that someone somewhere finally got the message..
Advocacy Opportunity: You might want to make a project out of working with local hospital personnel in your area to make sure that quality, responsible hospital emergency room mental health care services are available all the time as an option for consumers in your area.
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