State offering new virtual mobile crisis training
Nov. 7—Hey, mobile crisis responders of New Mexico: Class is almost in session.
The New Mexico Health Care Authority last week unveiled its new Mobile Crisis Team Academy, a free online training program to bolster the know-how of the growing ranks of crisis responders around the state.
The two-day training program will run once per quarter, with space for up to 34 students, said Tami Spellbring, deputy director of clinical crisis treatment and prevention under the agency's Behavioral Health Services Division.
The first session, Nov. 12 and 13, is already fully booked and overflowing, with a waitlist of 17, Spellbring said.
"The demand and the drive has been from providers and communities asking for more information," Spellbring said.
The new course is becoming available as a number of providers in New Mexico plan to expand services to qualify as "certified community behavioral health clinics," a federally designated model that includes staffing 24-hour mobile crisis teams.
Those teams offer services in the community rather than requiring people in crisis to come to a central location, Spellbring said. They also help keep those people from taxing emergency rooms unnecessarily and can help calm otherwise volatile situations.
"We're really wanting to partner with communities and providers wherever they are" in developing mobile crisis teams, Spellbring said.
The new training also comes as more communities around the state push for more behavioral health resources in general.
In Santa Fe, a 24/7 mobile crisis team operates out of the La Sala Center, 2052 Galisteo St., a facility Santa Fe County opened in 2021, although it offered mobile crisis services well before that. The center's mobile crisis team helped 197 people in October alone, Olivia Romo, a Santa Fe County spokesperson, said in an email Wednesday.
"Mobile crisis services can be an invaluable resource for individuals struggling with behavioral health challenges, and Santa Fe County is pleased to see the state's efforts towards training and supporting providers of this important work," she wrote.
Kate Field, crisis services director with New Mexico Solutions at La Sala, agreed.
"We are very interested to learn more about the training," Field wrote in an email. "We have eagerly supported other agencies and communities across the state in their own program development and are looking forward to further dialogue and collaboration."
Through contracts with the state, two Arizona-based companies will provide the training, Spellbring said: Community Bridges Inc., which provides mobile crisis services in several other states already, and Herrera Consulting Solutions.
Spellbring said the training will cover topics from verbal deescalation techniques and motivational interviewing to legal considerations and understanding law enforcement culture.
"It really goes across the continuum," she said.
