SWAMPSCOTT — Residents and public school students seeking mental health treatment can now call a confidential referral hotline.
The INTERFACE program, run out of William James College and contracted by the town of Swampscott, will help connect callers with outpatient mental health providers.
“This is an incredibly challenging time for our community and residents’ mental health and self-care,” said Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald. “Even in non-pandemic times, having access to quality mental health care is crucial, and we are hopeful that this service will take down some of the barriers that make it challenging to receive the care people need.”
Callers to INTERFACE, which can be reached Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 888-244-6843, first undergo a 15 to 20 minute intake conversation, where they give basic information about their or their child’s mental health concerns, insurance and contact information, and preferences for treatment.
The caller is then assigned a resource and referral counselor, who will reach out within a few business days to let them know that they are working on the case. Within three weeks, the counselor will match the caller with a mental health provider from the service’s database of approximately 9,000 in Massachusetts, and will follow up with the caller after one or two weeks to ensure that they have connected with the provider.
Swampscott Public Schools Superintendent Pamela Angelakis said that, like other communities around the country, students in the town have seen an uptick in mental health concerns due to COVID-19.
“Long before this pandemic, the social-emotional well-being of our students has been the district’s top priority,” Angelakis said. “Now, with the complications and challenges remote learning has presented, we worry about students’ mental health every single day. We have seen an increase in hospitalizations of our own students as well as watched the numbers increase across the Commonwealth.”
The Swampscott INTERFACE website lists additional resources for residents, including health- and COVID-related information. These resources can be accessed at interface.williamjames.edu/communities/swampscott.
While this resource is open to Swampscott residents and Swampscott Public Schools students, 60 other communities in the state, including Peabody and Lynnfield, have also contracted with the program to offer its services to their residents.
INTERFACE is not an emergency line. Residents experiencing a mental health emergency should call 911.
Trea Lavery can be reached at [email protected].
