It’s the most wonderful time of the year for many, but for many others, the holiday season is a struggle, especially if a person is dealing with a recent loss.
Michelle Nobles, the vice president of outpatient services for River Valley Behavioral Health, said she wants people—especially those noticing signs such as eating and sleeping more and increased irritability—to be aware of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and to know it’s not only for people dealing with suicide crises but also those struggling with day-to-day life, including grief.
Those day-to-day struggles could be family discord, substance use, domestic violence, anxiety in school, struggles at work or others, she said.
“We want folks reaching out before it gets to that crisis level,” Nobles said.
Trained crisis counselors at RVBH answer the calls, and most issues are resolved by them on the call, she said. And family or friends of people who are struggling can also call 988 to seek help, Nobles said.
RVBH answers all the 988 calls that come in from the area encompassing the Green River District Health Department. That includes Henderson, Daviess, Union, Webster, McLean, Hancock and Ohio counties. In addition to calls from the Green River district, RVBH takes in all the texts or chats that come from anywhere in the state, Nobles said. (Chats can be initiated at Get Help – 988 Lifeline)
Counselors who answer 988 calls are trained to help in suicide crises. Thus far this year in Henderson County, there have been nine people who have died by suicide, which is equal to the number last year, according to the Henderson County Coroner’s office. Coroner Shelia Patterson said at Tuesday’s Henderson County Fiscal Court meeting that between Thanksgiving and New Year’s “is usually a busy time of year (for the work in her office), unfortunately.”
Additionally, there have been 12 accidental deaths recorded this year, according to the coroner’s office, and because any type of suicide note was not there for documentation as a suicide, they can’t be classified as such. But some may have been deaths by suicide, even though they can’t be officially classified as such without the documentation, according to the coroner’s office.
Nobles said from Jan. 1 through Nov. 30 of this year there have been 455 calls to the 988 lifeline from Henderson County. And 23 chats or texts came from Henderson County in the same time period, she said.
Of those calls, chats and texts RVBH has answered from Henderson County, there were 196 calls for service from the organization’s mobile crisis unit, which responds to residences to assist in moments of high crisis.
The mobile crisis unit includes two peer support specialists and a licensed clinician, and is in service 24/7 with an average response time to Henderson County at 40 minutes.
Much of the work of the mobile crisis unit is aimed at de-escalating tension.
“The goal is to try to resolve the crisis so they can stay in their home,” Nobles said.
Another goal of the mobile crisis unit and 988 is for mental health calls to be answered by mental health clinicians—not law enforcement. In fact, most 988 calls don’t require a police response, she said.
That’s a good thing for law enforcement as 988 hopes to relieve some of the burden of calls going to 911, Nobles said.
She also said that the misconception that a call to 988 will automatically trigger law enforcement arriving at the scene is not true.
“We want to get that misconception cleaned up,” she said.
That’s very rare—she said 1% of the time emergency services will be dispatched to a residence because of a 988 call.
Another warning Nobles sounded concerns the rise of AI, specifically regarding people who look to it for therapy and especially in light of some of the national reports in which terrible things happened to people who looked to AI as a mental health provider. She said people need real people on the other end to help them.
“There is no replacement for human connection,” she said.
Nobles, who has worked at RVBH for 14 years, said “we know people are struggling” and RVBH wants people to understand all the options available, including a call to 988.
