Travis County MHMR - a little heavy on the MR?

So, in the inane spirit of this week, I had an experience with Travis County Mental Health and Mental Retardation that caused me (yet again) to question the logic of government thinking. MHMR has a division called PES - Psychiatric Emergency Services. Note that the "E" stands for emergency. This will become important later. Here's a tidbit from their website about what they do:

"Our Psychiatric Emergency Services serve residents of Travis County who are experiencing psychiatric crisis. PES is designed as a free-standing walk-in psychiatric emergency service open 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. PES provides psychiatric assessment, crisis intervention services, linkage with resources and physician services to children/youth and adults experiencing psychiatric distress."

In other words, when you are totally losing it and having a meltdown, they provide emergency services to help get you stabilized. They even have a nifty hotline: 24/7 Crisis Hotline: 512-472-HELP (4357).

Earlier this week I had occassion to call this hotline to get help for a client for whom I was really concerned. I dial the EMERGENCY HOTLINE and no joke . . . get a phone tree.

"For English, press 1."
"If this is a psychiatric emergency, press 1"
"To schedule an MHMR appointment, press 2"
A ring . . . and a transfer to some bad hold music, which if I wasn't having a psychiatric episode when I called, I would be after about a minute of that music.

As I was not the one having a mental meltdown, I could appreciate the humor in this. But had I been, let's say, having a psychiatric emergency, perhaps I would not have been able to navigate the phone tree with such deft skill and disarming charm. Or wait on hold until I could talk to a human.

A phone tree on an emergency hotline. Really? No offense, but maybe the MR division is doing a little too much of the thinking at MHMR.