Maine to expand crisis centers
The Living Room Crisis Center (LRCC) in Portland was designed to be warm and welcoming with couches, armchairs, and a skylight greeting people when they arrive.
Private meeting rooms for clients are a feature of the alternative mental health crisis center run by the nonprofit organization Spurwink, along with the state’s Office of Behavioral Health. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, anyone age 14 or older experiencing a mental health crisis can walk into the center for assistance.
Gov. Janet Mills is proposing that this model of an alternative place for people experiencing a mental health crisis to go be replicated in Lewiston. That community made headlines last October when a man carried out a shooting spree there, killing 18 people and wounding 13 others.
Earlier this year, Mills signed into law legislation and relevant budget initiatives to strengthen mental health services in Maine, especially crisis receiving centers. The budget establishes three new centers located in Lewiston, Penobscot County, and Aroostook County, and increases start-up funds for a hybrid center in Kennebec County.
“We know that, even with the progress we have made in recent years to expand behavioral health services, access to services can still be a serious struggle,” Mills said in her State of the State Address.
She noted she wanted to expand behavioral health services across the state with emphasis placed on crisis management. The goal is for any person suffering a mental health crisis to get “prompt and appropriate care, instead of being alone or languishing in an emergency department or a jail, as is too often the case.”
Funding for the crisis receiving centers is coming from the supplemental budget proposal Mills introduced in February that aims to add initiatives to strengthen public safety and bolster the state’s mental health system.
The budget provides $1.5 million to get the new centers up and running and is part of the governor’s broader plan to incorporate crisis receiving centers across Maine, thereby filling in gaps in the state’s mental health care system.
“Building on the successful pilot in Portland, crisis receiving centers are a proven model of behavioral crisis intervention, allowing any person experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis to get immediate, appropriate, and no-cost care,” said the governor’s press secretary Ben Goodwin.
“The law also directs the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a plan to create a statewide network of crisis receiving centers. This builds on the governor’s initial proposal in her bill to create a crisis receiving center in Lewiston and develop a similar plan for other parts of Maine.”
Mills said in her State of the State Address that her bill will direct the state Department of Health and Human Services “to expand these receiving centers, over time, into a broader network and provide greater access to services for people.”
“We know these centers work,” she said, citing that since the first one opened in Portland in February of 2022, nearly 3,000 people visited the facility to get help and resolve a crisis.
The governor announced plans to create a hybrid crisis receiving center in Kennebec County that also offers substance use treatment.
“Crisis receiving centers work,” Mill said. “Let’s build on them.”