Parachute NYC was a project that aimed to introduce mobile dialogic therapy teams and a set of other crisis response services into the busy New York City public medical system in 2012-2015, and through these services introduce a new paradigm for understanding psychiatric crisis and mental illness into the mainstream medical system. The main dialogic teams service did not continue after its pilot period but some other parts are still operating. dr. Pablo Sadler was the co-director of the Parachute project, and is also the Medical Director at the NYC Bureau of Mental Health. Funded by a federal Medicare innovation grant. On the psychcrisis.org podcast we're hunting for ways to change mental health crisis care, and the system that provides it. We're asking our guests, with their expertise from different parts of the process, to help us figure out what to do.
What I want to know:
What factors would have had to be different for the Parachute NYC project to be able to stay fully, permanently open at the end of its grant-funded period? What factors would have had to be different in order for the project to meet its original goal of serving only people experiencing first-episode psychosis or who had never taken antipsychotic medication? What specific improvements has the federal Medicaid/Medicare’s innovation grant program created in mental health crisis care? What is in the way of it making more effective change, more quickly?
Pablo led the introduction of a relational psychosis crisis response service in the NYC public health system