SAN ANTONIO – Faced with a crisis, City of San Antonio officials are working on a solution to support people during a mental health crisis.
“There’s a mental health crisis in America,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. “We need to apply innovation and expertise to address it.”
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Statistics show one in five adults living in the U.S. have a mental illness. In San Antonio, that figure averages out to approximately 250,000 people.
The city created SA CORE to respond to the crisis. SA CORE is a multidisciplinary team tasked to respond to 911 mental health calls. After seeing some success, city leaders said the initiative will continue and hope for continued growth.
“There’s no finish line to this,” San Antonio Police Department Chief William McManus said. “We will continue to evolve as we see better ways of doing it and better ways of tweaking it.”
Right now, the unit responds to approximately 14% of the 911 mental health calls coming into San Antonio each year.
An SA CORE unit is comprised of three team members: a San Antonio Mental Health Unit police officer, a San Antonio Fire Department paramedic and a Center for Health Care Services crisis response clinician.
Over the last two years, this team has responded to more than 5,000 calls. Over that same period, SAPD reported the city has had more than 60,000 calls come in.
“We want this to be a tool,” Nirenberg said. “We’re doing everything we can and continuing to learn how we can address this issue better.”
Nirenberg said he believes SA CORE is the future of crisis response.
“Breaking those stigmas is extremely important,” Nirenberg said. “I think we will have a safer community with SA CORE, not just for people who are experiencing crisis, but also the people who have to respond to it.”
A lot of change has already come in the last two years. SA CORE launched in 2022 for its pilot year as a single unit covering the downtown and central areas.
In 2024, three teams cover the entire city. The teams are all staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Funding is a nationwide problem for these programs. For the fiscal year 2025 budget, the City of San Antonio covered the current cost of SA CORE. The city expects this team to answer roughly 4,000 calls during that time.
However, no budgeted expansions came for this round of funding.
“We’re going to budget accordingly,” Nirenberg said. “That just not necessarily means (sic) the dollars might go up.”
SA CORE could also get additional dollars from another source.
“There is federal funding available,” Ernest Stevens, the deputy division director at the Council State Governments Justice Center, said.
In the meantime, city leaders are looking at ways to streamline and assist SA CORE’s response. Mental health advocates said the most growth could come with innovation.
Stevens discussed the following options:
- Routing some non-emergency mental health calls to 988
- Staffing mental health clinicians in call centers to help facilitate resources
- Adding a community response team to San Antonio to help answer 911 calls without staffing a police officer
Jelynne LeBlanc Jamison, the president and CEO of the Center for Health Care Services, said the city should lean into technological advancements.
“We need to really look closely and see how telehealth might support some of the work that we’re doing in the field in a dynamic environment,” Jamison said.
Staffing can also be an issue for these units. While SA CORE is a 24/7 operation, now-retired SAPD Assistant Police Chief Karen Falks said her focus was on increasing numbers.
KSAT’s interview with Falks took place before she retired on Nov. 1.
“We definitely need more teams,” Falks said. “Hopefully, that will happen at some point.”
Falks said the city council has approved SAPD to add more than 300 new officers over the next couple of years. While that staffing will likely go to patrol, Falks said the mental health team is also a priority.
“As we place up the numbers on patrol, eventually, that’s going to allow us to maybe start adding officers to mental health,” Falks said.
While SA CORE is the city’s main unit that responds to 911 mental health calls, SAPD and CHCS can both provide other mental health response services to people in need around the city.
If you or a loved one needs mental health support, click here.
“Crisis in Question: Measuring Mental Health in South Texas” began airing on Monday, Nov. 11 on The Nightbeat with a new episode each night at 10 p.m., culminating on Friday, Nov. 15 at 10 p.m. All episodes can be seen on KSAT, KSAT+, KSAT’s YouTube channel, and KSAT.com.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health or thoughts of suicide, call 988 or text TALK to 741-741.
You can also reach out to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) or the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) at 210-223-7233 (SAFE) or 800-316-9241. You can also text NAMI to 741-741.
More Crisis in Question: Measuring Mental Health in South Texas coverage on KSAT:
