"If you're having a psychiatric emergency, hang up and dial 911, or go to your nearest emergency room." This voicemail recommendation is very familiar to patients, families, and caregivers seeking mental health assistance. Yet people who follow this advice often find themselves waiting hours in an overwhelming, clinical environment—sometimes days—before receiving adequate psychiatric care. Dignity has rarely been part of the equation.

For decades, there has been justified concern in the mental health community that emergency rooms are not optimal places for individuals experiencing a behavioral health crisis. Long waits, crowding, clinical environments, and insufficient psychiatric expertise have created distressing experiences that compound the crisis itself. In response, varied efforts nationwide have focused on diverting people in crisis away from emergency rooms. While these alternatives serve an important role, the reality is that many individuals still arrive at hospital EDs in a psychiatric crisis—currently, one in every eight ER patients is there for behavioral health concerns.

But what if, instead of accepting that ERs are inherently frightening places for people in psychiatric crisis, we fundamentally redesigned them with dignity and empathy at the forefront? What if we recognized the critical role of emergency departments in crisis care and committed to dramatically improving them for behavioral health emergencies?

This session will discuss innovative, evidence-based ways hospitals across the country are transforming emergency psychiatric care, and restoring dignity, empathy and humanity to the overall emergency care processes, by:

• Designing more welcoming, therapeutic environments that reduce retraumatization and promote healing • Training staff in trauma-informed and de-escalation approaches that prioritize patient dignity and safety • Employing peer support specialists whose lived experience of mental health crisis creates powerful, authentic connections with patients • Implementing rapid psychiatric evaluation and intervention rather than prolonged waiting and boarding • Centering recovery and wellness rather than crisis containment alone