Molina Healthcare and the National Alliance of Mental Illness of Western Nevada are teaming up with the Carson City Sheriff's Office to help people going through mental health issues.
With the help of a $90,000 grant from MolinaCares, NAMI Western Nevada will be able to assign one full-time certified PRSS to offer peer support, community connectivity, peer mentoring, and resource navigation to Nevadans who interact with the Carson City Sheriff's Office MOST.
The peer recovery support specialist will ride along with the Sheriff's Office Mobile Outreach Safety Team or M.O.S.T.
Together they will patrol the streets looking for people who are having mental health issues, and they will work to divert people away from a hospital or jail.
To kick off this program, all three groups came together on Tuesday for an event to talk about common mental health issues, and what they can do to address them in the community.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness of Western Nevada estimates that nearly two and a half million Nevadans live in an area that doesn't have enough access to mental health professionals or resources.
They say that going through a mental health crisis can be very vulnerable, so getting them the proper help is the goal.
"So, trying to divert them out of jails and out of emergency rooms even and connecting them to community resources that can benefit them using a peer support specialist who understands and is living a recovery model themselves really designates with those folks and has a high rate of success," said Dr. Nima Alinejad.
The peer support specialist will be on the streets helping the M.O.S.T team respond to mental health emergencies, crisis de-escalation, people abusing substances, and more.
Once people are identified, the peer support specialist will guide them to the correct agencies who can provide resources, but the work doesn't end there.
"And then our peer support specialist is going to stay in contact with them maybe not every day it depends on what is really appropriate for that person but they will stay in long term contact so that frees up the MOST team to deal with those crisis situations," said Laura Yanez.
The peer support specialist is expected to start in early April, and members with the project say they will be tracking the success rates of their encounters, to see if they can expand on the program in the future.
