Tennessee’s Crisis Walk-In Centers Offer Hope in a Mental Health Crisis

There is no enemy like the passing of time when trying to get help in a mental health crisis.

Excellent therapists, nurse practitioners, and psychiatrists are available to provide care, but it can take days, weeks, or even months to get appointments - making those services ineffective during a crisis. As the clock keeps ticking without intervention or support, a crisis tends to escalate, making the problems to address more expansive by the second.

Pathways of West Tennessee Healthcare operates one of the State of Tennessee’s 9 Crisis Walk-In Centers to ensure help is available in those critical moments during a behavioral health crisis. For the last fifteen years, Pathways’ Crisis Walk-In Center has been open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for people to come to when they define themselves as being in crisis. Our center offers immediate safety, assessment, care, and coordination of next steps. From July of 2023 to June of 2024, 3,245 individuals walked through our Crisis Walk-In Center doors.

While staff complete nursing assessments, crisis assessments, labs and drug screens,  the work of ensuring a patient knows they are valued, important, capable, and taking the first steps toward healing is also happening. Sometimes, this is the most important part of the process.

Taped above a desk in the Walk-In Triage Center is another handwritten note from a recent patient who says she came to our front door after receiving devastating health news: “I was broken, sick, and just not well at all.”  The patient’s handwriting then fills the bottom of the page with the specific names of multiple Walk-In Center, Crisis, and Recovery Navigator staff with the message to make sure the “right person knows” that all of these individuals treated her with dignity.

“It made me feel like I mattered. These people are special and precious to me.”

Once staff complete all assessments, they refer the patient to the most appropriate clinical level of care. For some, that may mean creating a crisis management plan and getting a quicker outpatient appointment scheduled for follow-up. For others, it may mean admission to a Crisis Stabilization Unit, a Psychiatric Inpatient Unit, or a Medical Detoxification Unit. Through an innovative program at Pathways called “Connections to Care,” staff connect people who create a crisis management plan and schedule follow-up outpatient appointments with  a therapist and case manager within just a day or two to bridge the gap between the patient’s Walk-In Center visit and their next outpatient appointment.

Crisis Walk-In Centers help people get behavioral health care right away, often preventing unnecessary emergency room visits or involvement with the criminal justice system. This is key, says Mickie Whittaker, a self-described “NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Mommy” and Pathways Advisory Board Member. She has been working toward this type of crisis care for decades in Tennessee. Her son, now 65, first experienced a mental health crisis at age 19 and ended up in jail because there weren't other options available. Mickie communicated her gratitude to Commissioner Marie Williams of the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and said she believes that Crisis Walk-In Centers overseen by the Commissioner could have prevented her son from being placed in jail when he experienced his mental health crisis.

“As a mother of a child with mental illness, it’s been so exciting to see these Walk-In Centers used as an alternative to jail, with law enforcement being able to bring someone in the midst of a mental health crisis to the Walk-In Center for treatment rather than to jail for punishment.” Mickie believes the progress is impressive, as she has watched community mental health and law enforcement come together with a common goal of meeting the needs of individuals suffering from mental illness.

When someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, every moment matters. The Crisis Walk-In Center's doors are always open, with trained staff ready to help 24 hours a day. No one has to face a crisis alone.