Spokane Mayor Proposes Mental Health Task Force: “We really need to focus on the collective mental health of our community”

Mayor Nadine Woodward plans to lead the formation of a regional mental health task force in 2022.

The task force would aim to identify gaps and weaknesses in mental health care and achieve regional consensus on what Spokane needs – and reach out to leaders for funding to fill those gaps.

“We really need to focus on the collective mental health of our community, especially during the pandemic,” Woodward told The Spokesman Review.

Woodward envisions that this task force would include elected leaders from across Spokane County, including those with behavioral and mental health experience.

“It is important to involve the professionals and the elected,” said Woodward.

The demand for mental health services has increased during the pandemic and has uncovered the gaps and existing components on the ground that need further support.

The challenges posed by the pandemic are expected to continue, according to the Ministry of Health. In its latest forecast of the pandemic’s behavioral health impact last month, the Ministry of Health described a concurrence of factors that could weigh on people’s mental health before winter, including uncertainty about new COVID-19 variants and the return to Work in person.

The concept for a mental health task force was included in Woodward’s 2022 City Budget Proposal, although there is no specific line detailing costs and its exact structure has yet to be determined. The budget has yet to be approved by Spokane City Council, which is expected to vote on it in December.

The new regional task force would not be the first time local health care leaders have come together to address behavioral and mental health needs.

Behavioral health was part of the region’s diverse initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a working group on the issue being formed and led from the county emergency coordination center.

However, the focus of this task force was primarily on the COVID-19 pandemic and its immediate impact on access to mental and behavioral health care.

Since, for example, many providers switched to telemedicine or reduced personal hours in the initial phase of the pandemic, digital access became critical. The task force worked to secure a $ 63,000 donation from Spokane Teachers Credit Union to provide smartphones and one year of complimentary service to customers of organizations such as Frontier Behavioral Health, CHAS Health, Excelsior, and Inland Northwest Behavioral Health .

The new regional task force envisaged by Woodward could be broader in scope but build on the work and relationships forged between vendors and local executives through the COVID-19 task force.

“I feel like everyone was excited because it organized a regular process, not just what people saw, what their patients were going through – whether it was drug abuse, domestic violence, or mental health problems – it was an ongoing one , regular dialogue, “said Dan Barth, task force leader and general manager at Inland Northwest Behavioral Health.

Woodward believes that there are numerous ways that the behavioral health system can be improved.

Woodward recalls that Spokane does not have a licensed overnight inpatient facility for a young child who has been through a severe mental crisis.

Inland Northwest Behavioral Health opened a similar department for adolescents with mental emergencies last year, but only accepts patients aged 13 and over and plans to expand to younger patients.

“Any time our leaders, especially our local leaders, try to create more resources for our mentally ill community, it is very important and we would 100% support that and see us come around a table and help “Said Rlynn Wickel, CEO of Inland Northwest Behavioral Health, a private psychiatric hospital in Spokane operated by United Health Services.

Wickel said COVID-19 impacted the community’s mental health because it harmed people financially and restricted access to health care, including behavioral medicine. The effects are particularly visible in children, according to Wickel, many of whom were isolated at home when schools went online.

In the meantime, it has been more difficult to get hold of some resources. Inland Northwest Behavioral Health is hoping to upgrade its beds, but its efforts have been partially hampered by the nationwide shortage of care.

“We all compete to use these resources, and when there isn’t enough, access to inpatient health care is restricted and mental health is at the heart of it,” said Wickel.

There is also a need for more intermediate treatment options, Wickel said, and the hospital is responding by expanding its intensive outpatient programs.

Both the personnel challenges and the need for more treatment options precede the pandemic. In adolescent mental health management, the demand for services far exceeds the number of clinicians and resources available to children and adolescents in the state.

Locally, many outpatient treatment programs had long waiting lists during the pandemic, meaning a patient may not have a step-down program to be discharged into once hospitalized.

Behavioral health organization leaders and advocates welcomed Woodward’s calls for collaboration.

Chauntelle Lieske has been Managing Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Spokane since this summer. The organization’s volunteers, who have had psychological problems either directly or through family members, describe a “disjointed system,” said Lieske.

“This is such a huge system and affects so many different areas that it seems like a good idea to set up a task force to get people around the table,” said Lieske.

The Spokane Regional Health District doesn’t offer direct mental health programs, but it does serve people in need of behavioral health care, according to spokeswoman Kelli Hawkins.

“We applaud all efforts to help our community manage mental health issues, which we know will in turn improve the overall health of our community,” said Hawkins. “Our goal is to promote a healthy lifestyle as well as to recognize and prevent diseases and to react to them.”

Speaker review reporter Arielle Dreher contributed to this story.