Marshall native honored for crisis work: “They are worth helping”
Andy Sweitzer grew up east of Marshall on land his family has farmed for at least 150 years. The Centennial Farm sign went up when he was a boy. After his father died a few years ago, he and his wife moved into his father’s house at the end of a dead end lane with woods on every side.
These days he spends his working hours helping people through the worst moments of their lives, and HRC has named him Employee of the Month for September.
Sweitzer is a crisis recovery support specialist with HRC, the behavioral health agency serving Clark and Edgar counties. When a person arrives at the hospital in a mental health crisis, HRC gets the call, and someone like Sweitzer goes to meet them. Coverage runs around the clock. Overnight, he takes the call at home and aims to be there inside forty five minutes. He shares that coverage with Ethan McConkie, who recently joined HRC’s crisis team.
“Usually, if I’m seeing someone, it’s the worst day of their life or one of the worst days,” he said. “So it’s a privilege to be able to try and help people when they’re in that moment.”
The job is to sit with a person, understand what brought them there, and work out whether they are safe to go home and what supports they need if they are. Sometimes that is a safety plan and a referral for counseling or psychiatric care. Sometimes it is finding an inpatient bed. Often it is somewhere in between.
Much of it comes down to trust built in a matter of minutes. Sweitzer said he does not approach everyone the same way, and that when it is honest and it fits, he will share something of his own life. Growing up on a farm has opened more than a few conversations.
“I never lie to people,” he said. “But if there’s something that I feel like can help connect with someone, sometimes sharing parts of my own life helps.”
He is careful with promises. He will not tell someone they are going home before he knows it, and he tells people he starts with the closest facilities and works outward. If there is a place a person does not want to go, he will not call it. He also asks people what they want to happen. “At the end of the day, it’s their life,” he said. When someone tells him they need to be in a hospital, he takes them at their word.
There is one fear he would rather answer than leave to rumor, because he knows it keeps people from coming in at all. Most of the people he sees go home, and when someone does need inpatient care, the great majority go voluntarily. Involuntary placement exists, and in Illinois it requires both a physician’s certificate and a petition from the crisis worker. It is reserved for a narrow set of circumstances, generally when a person has taken direct steps to end their life or harm someone else and will not go any other way.
When it comes to that, Sweitzer said he tries to give people the full picture rather than pressure. Going voluntarily preserves more of a person’s rights, and it can mean a bed closer to home, since the involuntary paperwork is an Illinois document and rules out the facilities across the state line.
“I’m not trying to strong-arm you into it,” he said. “But if you go voluntarily, you retain a little bit more of your rights.”
Five years of this work have shaped how he understands why people reach the edge.
“Most people that are suicidal or having suicidal thoughts, even most people that attempt suicide, don’t really want to die,” he said. “They feel stuck in some set of situations that they don’t see any other path out of than not being alive anymore. And if they have a different option, they’re going to take it.”
That, he said, is what the work is for. Getting a person through right now, so they have the chance to find out whether tomorrow is different. Suicidal thoughts are usually temporary, and they respond to treatment and support.
He has a personal reason for believing it. His best friend died by suicide years ago, and Sweitzer carries a tattoo of him on his arm, drawn as a character out of the horror movies his friend loved. What he wishes for is one conversation at the one moment it would have counted. You are telling me you never want to see another movie again, he said. Never talk to your mom again. Never play frisbee golf again.
Some of those things sound small. That, he said, is exactly the point.
The last question on a safety plan asks a person to name something they care about and find worth living for. Usually it is family, and if they have children, almost always their children. Sometimes it is a dog, or a cat, or God. A few times, Sweitzer said, people have answered with themselves.
He rarely finds out what happens next. Crisis work is a single hard moment, and then the person is gone. Every so often someone stops him in public to tell him they are doing well. One man caught him outside a gas station years later, seeing a doctor, taking his medication, doing fine, and wanted him to know. Another time it was a mother whose daughter had just come home and was smiling again.
Those are the ordinary endings, and they are more common than the hard ones. People get better. It is why Sweitzer tends to tell people he hopes the next time he sees them, it is at Walmart or somewhere else completely unremarkable.
Sweitzer did not expect the recognition. He opened the announcement email, saw the name Andy, and assumed there was another Andy at HRC he had not met. Asked what carried him through a stretch of extra shifts and overnights, he called it a responsibility. “It’s a role I took on. Sometimes you have to do a little extra to keep the whole ship going.”
At home outside Marshall, he and his wife Bethany, married eighteen years, keep chickens, ducks, geese, and goats with their daughter. Feeding them and fixing fence is how he clears his head. Overnights run on Mountain Dew from a can, and he is particular about the can. Years ago, before any of this, he sang in heavy metal bands.
Asked what he would say to someone afraid to reach out, he did not hedge. “You’re important, and your life matters. If you’re thinking about calling, then you probably should.” Anyone carrying these feelings can call or text 988 at any hour, or go to the emergency room, where a crisis worker will come and sit with them.
And asked to finish the sentence “I keep showing up because I believe,” he said this: “Sometimes people need help, and they are worth helping.”
If you or someone you know is struggling
People get better. Suicidal thoughts are usually temporary, and they respond to treatment and support.
Call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, at any hour. It is free, confidential, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
You can also go to the emergency room. HRC’s crisis team responds there around the clock, and you do not have to wait until it feels like an emergency to go.
HRC main line: 217-465-4118.
HRC’s Marshall location is the Forsythe Center, 406 N. 2nd St. Learn more at www.hrcec.org
If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.
