March 7, 2022

Columbia County Chairman’s press release

COUNTY OKAYS MOBILE CRISIS ASSESSMENT TEAM FUNDING

At its February meeting, the Columbia County Board of Supervisors approved $175,000 in funding toward maintaining the Mobile Crisis Assessment Team (MCAT), which operates under the auspices of the Mental Health Association of Columbia-Greene Counties, Inc. Greene County will also fund the program with the identical sum.

Funding previously provided through New York State had been discontinued at the end of 2021. Columbia County’s portion of MCAT’s funding comes through the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act.

At its core, MCAT is designed to assess people and connect them with the appropriate services, with three main goals in mind: to avoid hospitalization, to minimize police intervention, and to link crisis callers to long-term service providers in the community.

MCAT’s telephone number is 518-943-5555. The line is staffed every day of the year from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Since their beginning in July 2015, said MCAT Director Katherine Oldakowski, MCAT has served 6,115 (3,056 from Greene County; 3,059 from Columbia County) unduplicated individuals, the result of “over 94,000 phone calls in and out of mobile crisis – part of that number is case management. We’ve been dispatched just about 4,000 times for in-person assessments. We maintain a 93 percent diversion rate from unnecessary hospitalization. We maintain a 99 percent diversion rate from further police intervention.”

MCAT carries a full-time staff of six, with roughly 20 staff members overall. MCAT is a mix of licensed professionals and paraprofessionals.

“It’s very clear that MCAT is not just responding to people that have mental health issues, but they are also responding at a very significant rate to people with substance abuse issues,” Columbia County Mental Health Center Director of Community Services/Department Head Dan Almasi.

“Most people that seek behavioral health services, either mental health or substance abuse services, anywhere between 40 and 80 percent have a co-occurring disorder,” he added. “If they’re seeking help for mental health services, chances are they have a substance abuse problem, and vice versa.”

“I have to give a lot of credit to county leaders on both sides of the river. In our case Chairman Matt Murell and the supervisors were very agreeable to funding MCAT,” Almasi said. “The counties have stepped up– they recognize the value it provides to their residents.”

“MCAT was a very timely program when it came in,” said Bob Gibson, commissioner of the Columbia County Department of Social Services. “It can respond to things quickly and come up with solutions in emergent situations, without having to involve things like trips to the emergency room, and it can help to save lives.”

“We do have that component where you have a mix of mental health and substance abuse problems, and they’re deeper than you’d want them to be in this community,” Gibson added. “That’s where MCAT has brought a particular area of expertise, going to a situation and helping to disarm it, helping to walk it back and working with people and get solutions put in place in real time.”

“We try to keep people where they are,” said MCAT’s Oldakowski. “We link them with what they need.”