Imagine your child falls ill, but there's a 6-week wait to see a doctor. With a sinking heart, you watch as your child sickens day by day, growing worse with each passing hour. Finally, one night a crisis comes. Your child is in terrible pain. You call 911, but the dispatcher tells you there's no ambulance service and no emergency room available.

Sound like a nightmare? This is the reality that parents of children facing a mental health crisis wake up to every day.

Fortunately, families in Santa Clara County do have a children's mental health crisis emergency service available to them. EMQ offers a free crisis intervention service for Santa Clara County families that are confronted with a child's severe mental health crisis. EMQ's teams of clinicians will provide counseling over the phone, and/or travel to the scene of the crisis to provide on-site intervention, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for any child under age 18 in Santa Clara County who is in acute psychological crisis. The crisis team follows up with a safety plan and referral services for the family.

For more information about this program, call EMQ's Client Services Department at (408) 379-3796. If you have a child in crisis, call the Child and Adolescent Mobile Crisis Program's 24-hour crisis hotline at (408) 379-9085 or toll-free 1-877-41-CRISIS.

» Mobile Crisis Tri-lingual Brochure

» Javier's Story: A Mobile Crisis Story of Healing