Something has shifted in Fort Wayne. I feel it every day.
For the first time in years, Courageous Healing, Inc. has a waitlist. Not because we stopped caring, not because we scaled back, but because the need has outpaced us.
The phone rings with calls that aren’t simply requests for therapy. They are people in freefall.
People carrying trauma and stress so heavy it has become their baseline. Neighbors processing grief after losing someone to violence or overdose. Individuals whose anxiety has made it impossible to function, to parent, to get out of bed. People sinking under the weight of depression with no one to call and nowhere to turn.
This is not a coincidence. This is a community under compounding pressure.
Gun violence continues to scar our neighborhoods, particularly in underresourced areas. Hate crimes are rising. Overdose deaths tied to methamphetamine and opioids keep climbing in Allen County, even as psychiatric care becomes harder to access and provider waitlists stretch for months.
And layered over all of it is something harder to name: a pervasive fear. Fear of what is happening in Washington. Fear that the safety net so many quietly relied on is being pulled from beneath them.
People are overwhelmed. And when they have no one else to call, they call us.
At Courageous Healing, we have built our work around serving communities that traditional mental health systems too often overlook: families facing poverty, cultural and language barriers, and generations of distrust in institutions that were not built with them in mind.
And what we are hearing now is that the ground beneath this community is shaking.
The majority of our incoming calls are not appointment requests. They are crisis calls. People in acute distress, unsure whether anyone will answer.
Some are suicidal. Some have just witnessed violence or watched a family member overdose. And some are one more hardship away from the edge, worn down by poverty, by fear, by carrying a burden no one should carry alone.
Fort Wayne has long lacked what many cities take for granted: a culturally grounded, community-based mobile crisis response.
When someone calls 911 in the middle of a mental health emergency, the response they receive, however well-intentioned, is not always the right one.
Law enforcement was not designed to provide mental health care. Emergency rooms are not designed for emotional stabilization. And for residents who already distrust those systems, a badge or an ambulance can make a crisis worse, not better.
That is why what we are building matters, and why we cannot wait.
At Courageous Healing, we are actively working to deepen our capacity for crisis support in our community. We are connecting with state and federal resources to bring strategy, information, and funding into our region, and we are growing our team with staff who carry this work as a specific focus.
Along the way, we are also redefining what “crisis” looks like in the populations we serve, learning from the trends and nuances we observe every day in order to respond in ways that are truly meaningful.
One of our most significant goals is the launch of a DMHA-certified mobile crisis unit, the first of its kind, in our region.
This is not a hotline. This is a response. Real people, showing up in real time, hoping to avert the need for a squad car, bringing deescalation, harm reduction and connection to care directly into the community — to homes, to neighborhoods, to wherever someone is struggling.
Our team will include licensed clinicians, certified peer support specialists with lived experience, and bilingual staff who can meet people not just where they are geographically, but where they are culturally.
We plan to grow this team in coordination with 911, 988 and community partners to the extent that community, state and federal support allows, doing our part to keep people from falling through the cracks.
Representation matters, and through shared experiences we continue to practice deep understanding and the holding of safe space.
The people flooding our phones, those on the waitlist, those calling in crisis cannot wait for the political climate to settle or the economy to stabilize. They need help now, and they deserve a system built to provide it.
Fort Wayne is a resilient city. But pain exists, and we acknowledge it, grieve it and decide to find ways to thrive together in its presence. We are asking our neighbors, our civic leaders and our institutions to stand with us.
Dawn J. Smith is a licensed mental health counselor associate and Strategy Integrator at Courageous Healing, Inc. (courageous healing.org) in Fort Wayne.