Crisis Stabilization Services for Individuals Who are Developmentally Disabled    

The SMH Crisis Stabilization Program is designed to provide essential psychiatric services for consumers with developmental disabilities and mental health needs. As a community-based program to enhance access to mental health assessment, intervention, crisis prevention, and stabilization services for adult consumers, the Crisis Stabilization Program has helped many people who historically have not received adequate psychiatric services due to difficulties meeting medical necessity criteria.  Resources provided for this program as the result of a class-action lawsuit settlement have allowed multidisciplinary teams to be put together throughout Washington State to facilitate work between DSHS Division of Developmental Disabilities and Mental Health Division to address the behavioral healthcare needs of this population.

Key elements of the program include a collaborative, cross-system model of care coordination, including crisis planning, psychotropic medication management, and extensive community consultation, education, and training.  Goals for this program include providing services that reduce the historically high utilization of emergency services, inpatient psychiatric care, and law enforcement resources by these consumers. These specialized, intensive services may be provided without formal enrollment in the community mental healthcare system, unless there is an identified need for traditional comprehensive mental healthcare. Team members provide outreach services to residential care facilities and hospitals, and have participated in community task forces and trainings designed to educate care providers who attend to the specialized needs of these consumers.