For years, despite a successful private practice in Harrisonville, Mo., Dr. Scott Maid considered it part of his civic duty to be available to the Cass County Missouri Sheriff’s Office as an on-call licensed behavioral health consultant.
Over the years, the need for his services grew and in January he was hired as the first full-time Director of Behavioral Sciences at the Sheriff’s Office in the rural/suburban county about 40 miles south of Kansas City.
Sheriff Jeff Weber made the bold decision to create the position. The importance of mental health among police personnel has been a hot-button issue in recent years, particularly in the wake of increasing difficulty in recruiting, accelerating retirements and resignations, violent interactions with the public, and the high incidence of service-related deaths and suicide.
Shortly after starting full-time, Maid found a tool unlike anything any other police agency was using to track mental health assessments within the 140-person staff. The Southern California-based medical tech company, OutcomeMD, developed a software platform that interacts with patients to measure and track their symptoms over time and inform care.