Mental Health Forum focuses on unmet needs of the community

The facts are startling. El Dorado County has twice the number of suicides than the state average. El Dorado County has 2.5 times the state average of maternity mental issues. The domestic violence rate in El Dorado County is 1.5 times higher than the state average. More people are living in the county with mental issues than ever before.

A day long forum of mental health care providers, agencies, medical professionals and other community members was held in South Lake Tahoe on Thursday in order to find what needs are being met, and unmet, in the area.

"We have fragile families and they're falling apart," LTUSD Superintendent Dr. James Tarwater told the group as the forum got underway. "Kids don't make it to school because they have too much to deal with."

Tarwater said they have identified 25% of the students in South Lake Tahoe as being in that fragile category. "We don't need any more isolation, we need to work together," he said.

Donald Ashton, Director of El Dorado COunty Health and Human Services, also touched on the working together to tackle the mental health issues in the community.

"We're not so small we can't make a difference, and not so big we can't get it done," Ashton said.

With mental health awareness higher today than in the past, some people are able to get the services they need, but there is still a large gap. The County sees about 100 mentally ill patients in their South Lake Tahoe office. They'd like to reach more but many people either refuse their services, don't know about them or are in the mild to moderate range of illness and don't think they need help.

Nearly 1 in 5 Americans deal with some sort of mental illness (18.2 percent of the total adult population in the United States) suffers from some mental illness, enduring conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

What is evident is that law enforcement is the key to helping with the mental health issue in a community. They see mentally ill people on a daily basis. Many of these people end up in jail, they get out and end up i the ER, get temporary treatment but are then back on the streets, arrested and the cycle continues without the patient getting the real treatment they need.

Housing continues to be an issue with the mentally ill. In South Lake Tahoe there is a severe lack of housing for them, especially transitional housing. The west slope opened a new facility and can how house 30 people but there is no such facility on the east slope. El Dorado County Mental Health is looking for transitional housing on the south shore in private homes since it is much cheaper to have the mentally ill live in a house than in a facility. Sixty patients have had to be placed out of the county because there are no beds for them in the county. At the state level, beds at facilities for the severely ill are full. There is an average of a six month waiting list.

"Make transitional housing a reality," said City Councilwoman Wendy David.

It was topics such as housing that filled the day for participants in the forum.

In Barton Health's 2012 Community Health Needs Assessment, three issues facing South Lake Tahoe were evident: There is a substance abuse problem, people need better access to health care and there are mental health issues.

Because of these results the first mental health forum was held in 2013, and today was the second. They gathered as a group, and not individual agencies and programs.

Facilitator Michael Ward led everyone through the day, through a process to identify the needs of the community, to identifying the gaps to forumlating an action plan to come up with a victory.

Participants were broken up into five groups, and they moved around the room and visited "pods" where mental health issues were broken down into ages 0-11, 12-18, 19-39, 40-65 and over 65. People were solution focused and worked on the collective impact everyone could have as a team. If you change the I to a We you move from illness to wellness. Increase awareness of the resources available and get NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) back in the community. They have not been present in South Lake Tahoe since their last director left.

A common thread was evident through the solutions for each age group.

Access to services cannot be improved unless you know what you have. With all the players in the room sharing, or planning to share, what they do and how they can help, access to mental health services by those who need them will improve in South Lake Tahoe.

Awareness was increased in the room, the next step is awareness in the community.

(the TedTalk video in this story is an interesting 16 minutes showing how childhood trauma can lead to mental illness, health issues and shortened life span)