This is Rumbull Strip, America Heilman.

We're just the catch-all for people.

And we can't say no, and we don't say no.

We want people to come to us if they're having a psychiatric emergency,

a hundred percent.

But our doors don't close.

They don't close for psychiatric patients

and they don't close for medical patients.

And there's times where we can't get out of our own way

as far as being able to provide good care for everybody.

That's an emergency room nurse here in a hospital in Vermont.

I've heard it said that if you want to get to know your town,

visit your local emergency room, Rich and poor, young and old, most of us have ended

up in the emergency room at one time or another. But over the last few years, there's been a huge

spike in one particular segment of the population visiting

the ER. People having mental health crises are visiting emergency rooms in record

numbers. People who are suicidal, homicidal, psychotic, people in desperate need of treatment.

But ER nurses are not trained to treat people with

mental illness and the departments are not designed to comfort to calm or to keep people

safe from themselves or others.

And though most people suffering from a mental health crisis are not dangerous or disruptive.

Some are.

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