Nevada Declares Mental Health Crisis ‘Handled’

Admits It’s Worse Than Expected

Well, dear reader, rejoice!

Ever the paragon of forward-thinking, Nevada has generously decided that one solitary crisis call center for the entire state was perhaps not enough. After much deliberation, elbow rubbing, and undoubtedly a good deal of committee meetings where the coffee was plentiful and the solutions were scarce, the Nevada Board of Examiners has greenlit a $49.7 million contract for a second 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline call center in Southern Nevada.

Why, you ask? The first one is positively drowning in calls, and nothing says ‘mental health crisis under control’ like the state scrambling to add another call center two years after launching the program.

According to Rachel Isherwood, who manages the Crisis Response Section, they’re thrilled to support the rising call volume. Now, there’s an interesting choice of words—’thrilled’ about a sharp increase in mental health crises.

That’s like being ‘delighted’ by a three-alarm fire or ‘tickled pink’ about a plague of locusts. But rest assured, this new facility will be part of what officials have deemed the ‘crisis response continuum,’ which, if we may be frank, sounds less like a plan and more like an acknowledgment that the crisis is so vast it needs an entire spectrum of response.

As it stands, Crisis Support Services of Nevada is the lone outfit fielding desperate calls from Nevadans teetering on the brink, valiantly answering more than 3,700 calls a month. One can almost hear the faint hum of a bureaucratic sigh in the statistics.

You see, the state proudly declares that 76 percent of these calls are being answered—meaning, by simple arithmetic, that a quarter of those reaching out in distress are met with the ever-comforting sound of silence or rerouted to a national backup center where a stranger from who-knows-where does their level best to help someone in a place they’ve never been.

But worry not, dear citizen!

The state assures us that 95 percent of calls will get answered within 20 seconds at the upcoming center.

How comforting to know that in just under half a minute, someone in crisis may reach a professional trained to de-escalate them—provided their particular brand of despair adheres to a neat and orderly timeline. And for those whose suffering refuses to be so accommodating–there’s the national center.

And let’s not forget Carelon Behavioral Health, the lucky recipient of this $49 million contract. They’ll be absorbing Crisis Support Services of Nevada into their operation, folding the experience of a battle-hardened crisis center into their national network.

It means that Nevadans will soon benefit from improved technology and ‘multiregional administration,’ which, translated from the language of bureaucratic optimism, likely means more paperwork, more metrics, and more hoops for people in crisis to jump through before receiving help.

As a final flourish, 988 Crisis Counselors will be seated alongside 911 dispatchers in Clark and Washoe counties. Officials promise it will allow for seamless call transfers, ensuring that if a person in crisis has dialed the wrong number in their moment of need, they will get redirected—because nothing soothes a tormented mind quite like being put on hold and handed off like an unwanted casserole at a potluck.

So, there you have it. Nevada is taking bold action, which is to say, the state is hurriedly patching holes in a rapidly sinking ship while pretending it meant to install a swimming pool all along. Thus, the crisis response continuum trudges forward, expanding, never solving, and always promising that the next call will get answered in time.