Mental Health Awareness Month
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Good mental and psychological health are just as important as physical health. Many of us know someone struggling with mental health issues.
The City’s public safety and building professionals respond to numerous calls for assistance each month, often calls for assistance including persons wrestling with mental health crises.
City employees may encounter:
- Hoarding, unclean conditions
- Unhoused individuals in unsafe locations,
- Domestic violence between family members or
- Violence between neighbors or customers and service providers
When violence occurs with a gun, some want to blame the ability to get guns. Others say we need to improve mental health resources. But it is a combination of both. The State of Missouri does not have a Red Flag law - we could use one. A red flag law is a tool, a gun violence prevention tool, that allows a due process court proceeding to temporarily remove firearms from a person who presents a danger to themself or others.
If you know of someone in our city who may need assistance with their mental health, we are here to help. Unfortunately, often public safety do not know and are unable to assist until a serious problem occurs. Instead of being proactive, we must be reactive. It does not have to be this way.
The City works with a Community Behavioral Health Liaison, a social worker provided by BJC, to assist our Public Safety First Responders. The City also added more assistance for our community when the cities of Richmond Heights and Maplewood hired a shared Social Services Coordinator, Audrey Culberson, in October 2022.
Ms. Culberson has developed a list of available resources at www.socialservicesmrh.com. You can contact her directly via the Referrals page here, by calling 314-399-2270, or emailing socialservicesmrh@gmail.com. When reaching out, rest assured your information will be kept confidential.
