Psychologist on Call

By Abigail Cumbus

When one thinks about going into the psychology field, one thinks about two options. A general therapist in a quiet comfortable office. The classic couch against the wall. The spinning chair they’ll sit in with a notepad in their hand, ready to write anything they need to remember about a client’s personal life and problems. Or a research lab, where they gather information through experiments and surveys, analyzing their findings to inform others about the human brain. One might not think that a psychologist would be working alongside the police in an emergency, but such an exhilarating adrenaline pumping job exists. On a cool rainy day, I was able to sit down and have a conversation with a mental health professional for the Department of Mental Health, Tyler Weathers. We settled in his dimly lit office, bookshelves lining the walls, his desk covered with two monitors. 

As a mental health professional, Weathers works with clients as a therapist. “I see six clients a day and they come in for everything from anxiety to trouble in school all the way up to schizophrenia, schizo-effective disorder, everything. I think today, I had a client who was coming in because he just got a cancer diagnosis; I had someone who had been binge eating, someone before that had autism, and someone before that had basic anxiety. It’s like the full gambit here of people that I see,” Weathers explained as he sat in his office chair in a relaxed position. 

In the evenings, Weathers is an on-call psychologist, where he comes alongside the police when someone is experiencing suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, psychosis, or anything that has to do with mental illness. Weathers further described his shifts stating, “The police call me out to try to find a diversion other than being arrested, and we try to divert them from the hospital too unless they need it. If there’s some way we can figure out somewhere for them to go if we can make a safety plan for how they can be safe tonight and have them come in for an appointment the next day, that’s great, but sometimes we will have to write them a detention order and have the police not arrest them but take them to the hospital, sometimes against their will, to get an evaluation from a psychiatrist…” 

Out of the two occupations, Weathers prefers his daytime job, as being on-call is a high-stress job. “The nighttime mobile crisis is just really stressful, you’re trying to coordinate hospital EMS, police, so definitely not my preference. The only thing I like about it is that you are in the community, helping people who are in crisis. It feels very important to do that work.” 

This stress is not only present when a psychologist is on site. The stress is present when they are simply just waiting to be contacted. “Something about always listening for your phone or being paranoid that it’s turned off and you’re missing a call is somehow exhausting, and so when you do that every night of the week, which I haven't done that in a while, but multiple nights a week you feel like you’re not relaxing at home. So if you work a full 8-hour day and you’re on call, even though you’re watching TV at home, part of you is always alert, so that gets kind of exhausting after a while, like after a couple of months without a break you get kind of burned out from never feeling like you’re relaxing in your off hours,” Weathers expressed. Despite the stress that comes along with the job, Weathers believes that it’s a very important job that he wants to continue. 

Although Weathers had acquired a master’s degree in his profession, it was when he started working at the Greenville Mental Health Clinic, that he discovered this occupation. “When I applied here at Greenville Mental Health, they talked about having this dual employee program where at night you can work mobile crisis and be out in the community and so I was immediately like ‘I can do therapy and do this mobile crisis thing? Heck yeah!’ and just immediately was like, ‘This is what I want to do,’” he recalled. 

It surprised Weathers that he hadn’t heard of this occupation, especially because it seems to be such an essential need. Weathers expressed his surprise and joy about knowing this occupation exists, stating, “...the fact that we have a service that exists that’s out in the community on call at any time [was shocking to me]. Anyone in the state having a mental health crisis is just a phone call away from therapists literally showing up at their house. Literally just a therapist on call to show up and help you. I don’t know if other states do that. I certainly have never heard of it. To me, it’s like the coolest thing in the world. And so, just the fact that that’s a thing that you can do. I never knew that was just an option available. you know because I remember watching TV and you see horrible things like someone in California jumping off the Golden Gate. Like here in this state, if anyone sees a jumper, if the police saw a jumper, there’s a therapist getting called out there immediately, so it’s really cool.” 

The occupation not only surprised Weathers; his friends from his master's program were also intrigued and surprised at its existence. “Everyone I graduated with they’re surprised that there is such a more exciting therapy job. Everyone I graduated from my master’s program with is just at private practice, it’s pretty running the mill, seeing the same type of clients every day, so when they find out I’m going out and doing this stuff that’s a little bit more extreme and a little bit more high risk… they’re always kind of shocked that I found this weird thing to sign up for,” Weathers told me.

This job opened Weathers up to new experiences and perspectives. For one thing, Weathers was able to have an extreme change of pace to his occupation. “I had been doing therapy for a year at a clinic in Spartanburg, and it was fun. It was pretty kind of mundane. It was anxiety and depression. It was everything I was seeing, so when I heard there was a job where you could go out and help people who are at the worst moment of their life, I was like, ‘That sounds incredibly exciting. I’ll never be bored.’ And then maybe some of the first nights I went out on calls, it was a little nerve-wracking just because when somebody is in psychosis and violent, it can be kind of scary, so it went from being exciting to nerve-wracking to then kind of getting my sea legs and feeling comfortable and confident and able to go out on my own and handle it myself, and it’s kind of where I’m at right now, where now it feels pretty routine and know what to do and know how to talk to police and EMS and the hospital, but it definitely did the whole roller coaster thing,” he recollected. 

As he continued to serve in the community, Weathers saw firsthand how the police in this state are absolutely amazing. “All the police work really great with us and with people with mental illness, so if you watch the news a lot, there’s a lot of hate and aggression and frustration with the police and how they handle just anyone, and every call I’ve gone out on I’ve always been shocked that the police handle the situation so well. They call me. They recognize it’s a mental health crisis, it’s not drugs it’s not just someone who’s angry it’s not just someone who’s crazy, they really care and want to handle the situation to the best of their ability to call us out to smooth things over,” he mentioned.

Unfortunately, few people are covering the entirety of calls for Greenville, so more people must join this team. In response to this concern, Weathers tries to recruit people as much as he can. “I am constantly marketing this place… As far as the school I graduated from, I’ve got people I’m still in contact with there so that anytime a student has a question about what they want to do with their therapy degree I’m like, ‘Ooh I’ve got this amazing job’, so anyone I bump into I try to tell them about Department of Mental Health, how cool it is, all the fun stuff you get to do, all the great bonuses, we get food catered here all the time. There’s a bunch of cool little perks for working here and I’m always marketing trying to get people to come work here because I really really really really believe in the department. We have a lot of resources that a private place doesn’t have. If I was a private clinician, if I had a client come in and he or she needed medication, I would just have to say, ‘Well I know of a psychiatrist and it would be great if you went and visited him, here’s one down the street to go to and whatever’, but I can literally walk someone to a doctor. If someone didn’t have a place to stay tonight, I can walk them to Care and Coordination, we can get them a place to stay. If someone needs a bus ticket, go get them one. Like we have resources in the building to help people that just a private place doesn’t, so it's really cool and really feels like we can make a difference in the community,” Weathers explained. Even if someone isn’t interested in being an on call psychologist, the Mental Health Center needs a lot of people on its staff. Due to the mental health crisis in America, the department gets many calls from people in need of help, most of which aren’t even able to reach a psychologist due to the number of calls. 

Though this job is much needed, it’s not fit for everyone. The sad reality is that not everyone can be rescued. With this in mind, one needs to have an accepting approach to this. “I’ve been on a call where someone has completed suicide while I was there. You’ve gotta be really confident in your skills and confident enough to know that you can't save everybody. If someone’s committed to completing suicide, it’s in their hands. There isn’t always a magic word you can say, so you’ve got to be kind of thick-skinned and kind of comfortable with the fact that you can’t save everybody. I know of people who have quit because they couldn't save someone and that just haunted them forever because they’re like, ‘What if I got there quicker? What if I had said something different?’ and it just broke them and they were like ‘I can’t do this job’ so I think you just have to be kind of thick-skinned, accepting, and with the person I lost, I was like ‘I know me and my partner did everything we could’ve done and I walked away saying ‘I tried my absolute best. I don’t think there was anything more that could’ve been done and it was just going to happen,’” Weathers explained. 

The uses of psychology are quite broad, and knowing that it’s not limited to sitting in an office trying to figure out people’s problems allows the field of psychology to be expanded further than therapy or research. The knowledge that there are many more occupations that use psychology shows its importance.