Declines in state support for mental health services evident on the Palouse
A Moscow woman spent years wrapping herself and her car in tin foil, battling police and convincing herself the government was spying on her through her electronics and wall sockets. She often would live in her car to escape the paranoia.
Lt. Paul Kwiatkowski of the Moscow Police Department remembers the woman, diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic, and said when she had her illness under control she was a productive and reasonable member of society. But when she wasn’t, Moscow police spent hours responding to mental health crisis calls for the woman.
“When she was on her meds, she was one of the most productive people I’ve ever met,” Kwiatkowski said. “But when you’re battling that type of illness, it’s a cycle. Often we see people who take their medication and think they’re healed so they stop taking it, then it’s just a downhill slide.”
Cases like this have become more common in the Moscow area in recent years, after statewide support for mental health was reduced in the early 2000s, and again following the 2009 economic recession. The decline in support caused the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (IDHW) to reduce statewide services for adult mental health patients, according to Ross Edmunds, administrator for behavioral health for the IDHW.
Kwiatkowski said what used to be only 12 or 13 cases a year turned into 50 or more calls related to mental health crises, not including calls related to suicide and depression. Kwiatkowski said the department struggles to keep up with the demand for assistance in such cases.
This problem — the struggle to meet the growing demand for mental health resources — is one that plagues the community, as well as the University of Idaho and the rest of the state, and is one that won’t be easy to solve as need continues to increase.
Funding mental health
This year, for the first time since the economic downturn that led to budget cuts in every department, the state made an investment in improving mental health services.
Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter requested $1.52 million in state funding to start a second mental health crisis center in the northern part of the state to complement the one that already exists in Idaho Falls. Ultimately, it is Otter’s goal to have a crisis center in all seven regions of Idaho.
Idaho lawmakers on both sides of the isle supported Otter’s request and appropriated $1.72 million for a North Idaho crisis center expected to open in Coeur d’Alene within six months.
“This is the state’s first large general fund investment in behavioral health in a number of years,” Edmunds said.
Edmunds said the behavioral health board for Region 2 (the five-county area that includes Moscow and Latah County) wrote a letter in support of the crisis center’s Coeur d’Alene location because although it is a different region, the city had already been working toward a plan for a mental health crisis center.
“Coeur d’Alene is really ready to go,” Edmunds said.
He said this increase in funding for mental health services is a further recognition of the state’s desire to take care of its citizens who suffer from some sort of mental illness.
“People who are dealing with these issues every day are struggling to get out of bed every day or hear voices telling them to be productive or unproductive or destructive, and it’s a chronic illness they can’t control,” Edmunds said. “The state is making an investment and an effort to deal with some of these issues.”
But as Kwiatkowski points out, crisis intervention is only one aspect of treating mental health. Diagnosis, assistance and non-crisis services still suffer from the budget cuts imposed years ago.
Mental health at UI
UI offers mental health resources through the Counseling and Testing Center (CTC), but just as in the rest of the state, those resources have been stretched thin in recent years.
While the demand for counseling center resources has increased, financial support to the department has not improved fast enough to meet the need, said Sharon Fritz, one of eight licensed psychologists at UI. She said demand has consistently increased since 2003.
“There is the rare exception that I am not busy every hour that I’m at work,” Fritz said.
Fritz said counseling center officials would like to expand services to assist more students and meet the increased demand. But without the financial resources to do so, the department is working at capacity.
Unless a student is in crisis and needs immediate attention, Fritz said the wait to meet with a counselor is usually two to three days, and at peak times during the school year, can be up to a week.
Fritz said students in crisis can also call the CTC phone number after regular business hours and be directed to a counselor, and she said if there is a student she is really concerned about it’s not uncommon to give them her private number.
CTC officials primarily focus on helping as many students as possible, and making sure students and their professors know about the resources at their disposal.
“We value outreach because I see that as prevention and a way to reach a group of students who may not know about our services,” Fritz said.
A lot of time and effort goes into outreach through events on campus, in-class presentations and cross training for faculty members, all provided by university counselors and student volunteers, Fritz said. But, she said, the department does prioritize meeting with students individually over outreach if necessary.
“Our services are stretched to the max, especially given that we try to do a lot of outreach,” Fritz said. “We’re trying to get out there, tell people what’s going on, strategies they can use to manage it.”
Fritz said it’s important for students to know about the CTC services because they are free, confidential and of great quality. She said if students were to seek help from a community provider, the wait for an appointment is often weeks instead of days.
“We put a high priority on meeting the need,” Fritz said.
Law enforcement and mental health
Issues of mental health often come with a stigma — it’s an unwritten don’t ask, don’t tell situation for those affected and it stops many from seeking necessary help, Kwiatkowski said.
For those who seek help, a lack of local services and medical professionals certified to address mental health issues puts much of the burden on UI, the Moscow Police Department and the few mental health service providers in the area.
When mental health services were reduced in Idaho following the economic recession, Kwiatkowski said the annual rate of serious mental health related calls, just in Moscow, nearly quadrupled. He said that is not counting the almost daily calls relating to suicide and depression.
“Sometimes, we only have three officers on duty,” Kwiatkowski said. “We sometimes get really backed up, and usually when you’re dealing with these mental health cases you need more than one officer there.”
Kwiatkowski said aside from suicide-related calls, the most common mental health crises the department confronts are people dealing with one of the various forms of schizophrenia — usually accompanied by some form of paranoia.
Moscow police respond to all mental health crisis calls whether they come from campus or elsewhere in Moscow.
During the school year, the population in the area increases by a third, and with that comes an overall increase in need for police services not related to mental health. Kwiatkowski said when officers must spend several hours transporting and dealing with mental health cases, it puts a greater strain on the department, as well as other community resources.
“If we have three officers on duty and two are spending several hours of a 10 hour shift responding to and transporting a mental health patient, that’s that much less time they’re responding to other calls and patrolling your neighborhood,” Kwiatkowski said.
Kaitlyn Krasselt can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @kaitlynkrasselt