South Florida's Mobile Response Teams: Characteristics, Outcomes, and Implications for Behavioral Health Crisis Care

This study evaluated four Mobile Response Teams (MRTs), providing 24/7 behavioral health crisis intervention services, using retrospective administrative records of calls made to an MRT hotline between May 1, 2024, and April 30, 2025. The sample included 2,300 eligible calls representing 1,960 unique individuals (M^age = 30.01 years, SD = 19.92, Range = 5-89). Programmatic descriptives examined call and final dispositions, method of response, and response times, while chi-square tests assessed bivariate associations and binary logistic regression assessed predictors of final disposition, dichotomized as psychiatric hospitalization vs. diversion. Across the 12-month observational period, 64.8% of cases resulted in diversion, and the average in-person response time was within the State of Florida's 60-minute benchmark. Consistent with the program's "in-person first" model, 95.0% of calls were addressed face-to-face. Significant independent predictors of psychiatric hospitalization included age (adults 18 + years), higher suicide risk scores, presence of a specific suicide plan, law enforcement involvement, call source (school setting), and call reason (suicide attempt/ideation). Findings from this large, ethnically diverse, naturalistic sample demonstrate that MRTs not only divert a substantial proportion of crisis cases from hospitalization but also consistently meet state standards for timely and "in-person first" response, with implications for behavioral health policy and crisis service delivery.