The Montgomery County Crisis Center in Rockville is facing a shortage of mental health professionals as the county seeks to increase services to meet a spike in need after the pandemic.
Mary Anderson, spokesperson for the county’s Department of Health and Human Services, said that 11 out of the center’s 64 positions are vacant. Most of the vacancies—including therapists and one peer support specialist position—are for staff for the Mobile Crisis Outreach Teams. The center also has three vacancies for child and adolescent therapists.
The outreach teams, which consist of licensed clinicians and peer support specialists, provide “emergency crisis evaluations for individuals who are experiencing a mental health crisis,” according to the Crisis Center’s website.
During a March 21 press briefing, Montgomery County Chief Administrative Officer Rich Madaleno discussed how the county is heavily prioritizing the hiring of more police officers and said another part of the government’s public safety efforts is expanding upon the Crisis Center’s three outreach teams.
“Mobile outreach teams are an effort to reduce harm to the public. It shows and demonstrates our community-based crisis response,” Madaleno said. “It helps develop community trust because sometimes a uniformed response isn’t necessarily what someone in crisis is looking for.”
He added that the county is striving to expand to five outreach teams with existing grant money but needs the personnel to do so. County Executive Marc Elrich’s proposed $7.1 billion fiscal year 2025 budget includes enough funding to support seven teams, Madaleno said.
Beth Tabachnick, the center’s manager, said during the briefing that the need for more staff can be attributed to several factors.
She said the center has received more crisis calls, especially for children and adolescents, since the pandemic began in 2020. The isolation and economic stresses that accompanied the pandemic compounded mental health issues, and some children and teens did not have the developmental skills needed to cope, which impacted their behavioral health, she said.
“People didn’t have as much access to their providers. They were isolated,” Tabachnick said.
From fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2023, which ended June 30, calls to the center spiked from 37,761 to 43,540 each year, and calls directed to the outreach teams specifically jumped from 397 to 486 during that same period, according to Anderson.
The county is expanding its mental health services, so the Crisis Center needs to hire more personnel to fulfill those roles.
In addition to increased need, the county is also experiencing a national shortage of mental health workers.
“At a time where the need for mental health services is growing, and there’s more acknowledgment of the need for mental health services, there’s also a decrease in the number of individuals going into licensed mental health fields,” Tabachnick said. “Unfortunately, that’s a trend that’s expected to continue.”
To help fill its vacancies, the Crisis Center is stepping up its recruitment and outreach efforts.
“We are actively recruiting and interviewing all eligible interested candidates who have applied for the therapist positions,” Anderson said. “Additionally, we are partnering with local universities in recruiting future licensed mental health professionals prior to graduation.”
She also said the center is expanding its graduate internship program with the hope of attracting future employees and is partnering with the county’s Office of Human Resources to participate in local community and university-based job fairs.
Filling the vacancies is critical to provide the services that people need when they are having a mental health crisis, Tabachnick said.
“Emergencies don’t just happen from 9 to 5,” she said. “In particular, when you are having a behavioral health emergency or you’re in distress, your provider’s not available or you’re not able to get in touch easily with someone whom you trust or you have a rapport with, it’s critically important to have a resource who can respond to be available to support you in that situation.”