Compassion, understanding improve emergency care for the mentally ill at UNC Hospitals

"We exhausted every single resource that was available to us," she said.

Snyder is the mother of a 14-year-old who suffers from multiple mental illness diagnoses including autism. When he goes into a mental health crisis, the only answer is to take him to the emergency room, which is a place she feels he can be safe. Sometimes the stay in the emergency department can last days and even weeks as her son waits for a bed at a mental health facility.

"We had a couple of stays that were considered boarding, so 30 days or more," she said.

This is a common story for parents of children who are dealing with mental health challenges, and it's a story Christian Lawson has heard many times in his more than two decades working as a nurse in emergency departments.

"I've been an emergency nurse for 20 years, and every ED I have worked in around the country has behavioral health challenges with patients presenting and nurses not having the tools to deal with it," Lawson said.

Lawson is now the director of emergency services at UNC Health Care, and he is making it his mission to work for change.

"There was some sense of 'I don't know what else we can do,' and that led me to have some out of the box ideas," he said.

One of the first things he did was begin hiring nurses who specialize in behavioral health, creating a department within the department.

"We have developed a 24/7 psychiatric service that can evaluate patients in less than 4 hours of arrival on average," Lawson said. Before the program started, that kind of evaluation could take up to 24 hours.

He also started a program to recruit volunteers to come in to sit with families to listen and help with anything they may need.

"The first year or two that I was here, we heard the majority of complaints about how we were not evaluating folks in a timely fashion and weren't providing enough treatment, and now quite honestly the complaints are few and far between," he said.

Parents like Snyder can see a real difference.

"Compassion overall. That's the thing they are doing differently," she said.

She was so impressed with the operation that she started volunteering at the hospital and lending her experience to those who are struggling to navigate the system.

"When you get into a situation as complex as the mental healthcare system and the rapid pace you are moving, the lack of resources, it can create that negative culture and environment and you lose that hope," Snyder said.

Lawson and his team are working to create more relationships with mental health facilities which will allow them to find beds for patients quicker. It's a series of small steps the team is hoping will make life easier for families.

"It's not one silver bullet that is going to fix it. It is going to be about 30 silver bullets," Lawson said.