OAKLAND COUNTY — The Oakland County-based nonprofit organization Common Ground has been working for decades in conjunction with local governments, law enforcement, medical professionals and community groups to help residents find treatment and resources to support their mental welfare or to intervene before an untreated mental illness becomes a crisis.
And because the need for those services has only grown since Common Ground was founded in 1971, the nonprofit has grown, too.
Recently, it announced plans to launch a $1 million Behavioral Health Urgent Care to address the increasing demand from local people facing stress, addiction and other emotional wellbeing issues.
“Southeast Michigan is facing a major shortage of mental health crisis centers,” Heather Rae, the president and CEO of Common Ground, said in a press release. “Our new Behavioral Health Urgent Care will enable us to serve thousands more people who would otherwise suffer in silence or go to a hospital emergency department.”
The Behavioral Health Urgent Care will be Common Ground’s largest expansion initiative in 25 years. It comes as the organization marks its 50th anniversary. It also comes at an unprecedented time in the history of behavioral health care. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a massive jump — a 281.8% increase — of adult respondents reporting symptoms of anxiety or depression between June 2019 and December 2020.
Common Ground provides a crisis hotline, victim assistance and support groups, as well as mobile response units and facility-based services. In addition to providing crisis services at the Resource and Crisis Center, located on the Oakland County government campus in Pontiac, Common Ground also operates a 24-hour shelter for at-risk youth in Royal Oak and mobile crisis teams in Genesee County
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Tiffany Esshaki
C&G Newspapers
