Nevada's 988 mental health crisis hotline is experiencing access challenges due to language and cultural barriers, This is Reno reported Feb. 21.
For example, there is no language or culture training for hotline workers working with Asian American and Pacific Islander individuals who phone 988, according to the publication.
Spanish is the only other language besides English that 988 workers in Nevada are trained for.
"Certainly we can always do better and need to do better," Cody Phinney, deputy administrator of the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health, said at a presentation on mental healthcare in the state to the state health and human services committee, according to This is Reno.
Crisis Support Services of Nevada, which oversees the hotline, told the publication it does provide cultural competency training for staff in general and specifically regarding Indigenous, LGBTQ and Hispanic people and people of color. But there is no training specific to Asian American and Pacific Islander individuals.
"We do not give cultural competency training specific to Korean, Japanese or Tagalog," Rachelle Pellissier, executive director of Crisis Support Services of Nevada, told This is Reno. "We do have an interpreter service that allows us to serve any language, though."
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up 12 percent of Nevada's population. Mental illness has also been on the rise in this community, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Survey on Drug Use and Health. SAMSA data also shows that members of the AAPI community are three times less likely to seek mental health services than white individuals.