Independent Care Navigators for the Mental Health Maze

Abstract

SummaryThe nonprofit organization INclude – the Mental Health Initiative has developed and deployed an independent, data-backed navigation service in North Carolina and provides insights and lessons learned from its first year of operation as a pilot. The Mental Health GPS model starts with the traditional peer-run warmline for people who may just want to talk or learn about available, suited resources. It then enhances this basic support with sophisticated human and database resources to provide an independent navigation service delivered by peer support specialists who possess both relevant life experience and clinical knowledge/fluency, and are backed by a vetted list of mental health providers to ensure guidance to apt services. The GPS is not designed to be a crisis hotline for imminent life-and-death circumstances, but instead to help a person navigate the mental health system and effectively avert a crisis. In the 1-year pilot, the Mental Health GPS service received 2,384 calls or texts, almost all generated by Internet searches on smartphones. The themes most often associated with caller concerns were work/personal (41.6%), depression (11.7%), and general anxiety (7.2%).