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Unique MCAT program finds success on Indy's east side

A program called MCAT recently finished its testing phase and the results are promising.

INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - When police respond to a 911 call involving mental health or addiction issues, their options are often limited: send the person to jail or the emergency room.

That's no longer the case on the east side.

A program called MCAT recently finished its testing phase and the results are promising.

Their goals: de-escalate crises, help overdose survivors get treatment and help the mentally ill find resources for help, so that they don’t end up behind bars. MCAT accomplishes all of that by responding before an arrest – right at the scene of the emergency.

This first-of-its kind crisis unit is now entering its ninth month in operation.

MCAT is Indianapolis’ Mobile Crisis Assistance Team that first deployed in IMPD East District August 1, 2017.

It’s comprised of four teams of three: patrol officer, paramedic and licensed mental health clinician.

The MCAT go to emergencies specifically involving mental health or addiction issues.

They either hear an emergency on the scanner and respond, or respond at the request of officers first on-scene.

Their training and ability to spend lots of time with a victim of an emergency can connect people with treatment.

"With MCAT, we can relieve the officers on scene spend an hour, spend two hours with that person, with their family, connecting them to resources,” said Melissa Lemrick IMPD patrol officer in the MCAT unit.

"We’re making sure that people end up where they're supposed to be,” added IEMS paramedic William Eberhardt.” Jail, for mental illness, is not the best place. It’s not the healthiest. It's hard to understand somebody in that position unless you've been there."

Eberhardt has been there. He can empathize with the people he treats. He says he was diagnosed with MS a year ago.

“That can be depressing and I had to work through the system and receive treatment. I know how hard that is," Eberhardt said.

It’s personal for all the members of MCAT. Lemrick says she’s known people dealing with addiction. She’s seen the struggle. She’s also seen the problems getting people help.

“I think this is a great way of giving back to those people,” Lemrick said.

The IU Public Policy Institute just finished evaluating MCAT's pilot program, from August to December. They found a lot of success.

MCAT only took two-percent of people they encountered to jail. In two-thirds of their runs, they were able to relieve patrol officers, allowing them to get back to regular duty.

85-percent of police interviewed in surveys said the team was very useful.

But researchers found a glaring problem, too.

"One of the biggest things that the city in general has to deal with is the lack of treatment resources for people,” said Katie Bailey, analyst with the IU Public Policy Institute and co-author of the study on MCAT. "A lot of people are still being taken to the emergency room or the hospital just because there's not really somewhere else to take them."

The team echoed those concerns.

“There’s not a lot of places for these people to go. There's no money there for it,” Baumgardt said, “and hopefully we'll see that change in the future."

"Sometimes when they're under the influence, they say they want to go somewhere NOW. And we don't always have that now place. More resources would be great,” Lemrick added.

It's something the city says it’s working on.

MCAT is a partnership between Eskenazi Health, IEMS and IMPD. They’re all in the process of analyzing the program and determining how to make it better and whether it should expand city-wide.

That would be costly – an estimated $1 million per district per year.

But those costs might be offset by the city’s savings by not jailing people or paying for ambulance rides to the hospital. All of that is under review right now.

The city expects to announce next steps for MCAT in the next few months.

In the meantime, the team in East District will keep rolling, making a difference one call at a time.

"In my mind, touching one family, one person and changing their life is a success,” Lemrick said. But I feel like we have really helped change the perception of mental health and the disease just in the few short months that we've been out here."

For the teams it is personally really rewarding changing perception and response to mental health.

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