Javier's Story A Mobile Crisis (True) Story

Sarah Shems, a clinician with EMQ’s Child and Adolescent Mobile Crisis Program, reports the following story:

“The police called my team to help a family whose 6-year-old son Javier was holding a knife to his throat and threatening to commit suicide. The parents were very young, did not speak English, and had three other young children who were frightened by what was happening. Complicating the situation was the fact that Javier had spent most of his life in the U.S. and could not speak his parents’ native language fluently, so parents and child could not communicate very well.

Our bilingual team, which responded to the call, was able to communicate with both parents and child. We discovered that Javier was experiencing an episode of psychosis. He told us that he was hearing voices inside his head, telling him to harm himself.

Javier needed assistance from a psychiatrist, but there is a several-week wait for children to see a psychiatrist in Santa Clara County. Usually in this situation a child would automatically be admitted to a mental hospital, but because of Javier’s young age we felt that it would be too traumatic for him to be sent away from home, especially since our county has no mental health hospital beds for children and he would have had to be sent to a mental hospital in another county far from his family.

To complicate matters, it was a Friday night, most offices were closed, and the family had no health insurance. However, after extensive phone calls and legwork, the Mobile Crisis team was able to find a psychiatrist who was willing to see Javier on Monday because of the seriousness of the situation. In the meantime we made a safety plan with Javier’s family, which involved removing all items from the house which he might use to harm himself, and arranging for a rotation of family members to keep a 24-hour watch on Javier until Monday morning. The Mobile Crisis team kept in touch with the family throughout the weekend, to help them through this difficult time.

On Monday, the psychiatrist prescribed medication for Javier that stabilized him. He no longer hears voices telling him to harm himself, and he is safe at home with his family, receiving the therapy that he needs.”

*Names of people and places have been changed to protect the confidentiality of the family.

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Confidentiality of EMQ children and families has been preserved
through the use of models. Some stories may be composites of multiple cases.