SAMHSA Region-VIII (Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming) has been working closely with SAMHSA Headquarters and the National Consortium on Crisis Services to review the standards for behavioral health crisis services. Structured listening sessions with behavioral health officials and crisis services experts in five of the six Region VIII states (Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming) were held in March and April of 2021. These sessions examined crisis services systems throughout Region VIII in comparison to SAMHSA’s National Guidelines and recommended best practices for behavioral health crisis care services. In efforts to identify what is considered to be “best practice” in this region, behavioral health crisis services provided in frontier and rural communities were emphasized during these sessions. This report is a regional comparative analysis of crisis service systems and captures current Region VIII state crisis services planning and program implementation efforts. The report findings and executive summary will be shared with Region VIII state behavioral health officials, as well as SAMHSA Headquarters in order to further support their crisis service system development as well as implementation of the new National Mental Illness and Suicide Prevention Crisis line, *988.
Region VIII-SAMHSA Structured Listening Sessions: State Crisis Profile
