Dealing with mental health crisis one Zoom call at a time

Busching tests a virtual meeting with a tablet at the Cook County Sheriff's Office in Chicago. The Cook County Sheriff's Office has started putting people having a crisis face to face with mental health professionals before they lash out at deputies or try to harm themselves and to do it they're taking a page out of countless businesses forced hold their meeting virtually. — AP

CHICAGO: The sergeant had so little use for the tablet that she did not bother to grab it from the seat of her squad car when she ran into the house where a suicidal man was screaming and slamming his head against the floor.

But when she saw the man might harm himself, his family or her officers with knives he was threatening to use, she sent an officer to retrieve the tablet. She turned it on, handed it to the man and told him to talk to the woman whose face appeared on the screen. And then she watched as the man immediately calmed down.