Daines staff member meets with behavioral health council

Members of the Hill County Behavioral Health Local Advisory Council met with a representative from the office of Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., Wednesday at Bullhook Community Health Center to discuss their organization’s activities and the area’s behavioral health needs.

LAC Chair Andi Daniel and Bullhook Community Health Center Behavioral Health Manager and LAC Secretary Deidre Reiter provided details and answered questions about the challenges the area faces when it comes to mental health care and substance abuse disorders, as well as what they are doing to combat them.

Daines sent a statement to the Havre Daily News this morning about the meeting with the LAC.

“Mental health issues are increasingly present in Montana communities,” Daines said. “I’m glad to engage and work with local groups on how they are helping Montanans as well as hear any concerns and solutions they may have.”

Daniel said the LACs have been around since the turn of the millennium and serve to relay information on local needs back to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, but also to provide support to the community and improve awareness about mental health issues and resources, which she said has been their main focus of late.

She said grants received by the Hill County Health Department during COVID-19 have allowed the LAC recently to do more by creating a centralized behavioral health resource guide that people can use to find the provider or service that best fits them, a project that is still being worked on in partnership with a Montana State University-Northern student.

Daniel said the LAC is also still working on creating Public Service Announcements featuring local people talking about their experiences dealing with mental health issues and how they found help.

She said the intention of the PSAs is to normalize getting help for mental health issues and the LAC is still looking for people interested in being interviewed for the project.

“It’s more impactful when you have community members telling their stories,” she said.

After the meeting she said anyone interested in participating can get in touch with her by email at [email protected], and find more info at http://hillcountylac.com .

Daniel also talked about another one of the few positive things to come out of the pandemic; the increase in telehealth services which she and Reiter said has been a huge help to patients and providers alike.

“I feel it’s a big part of the future of health care,” she said.

Reiter said some still prefer in-person care, but the introduction of increased telehealth has drastically decreased the number of no-shows at Bullhook, and has made the lives of providers much easier.

She said transportation is a big barrier to a lot of people getting the help they need, with some people needing to use the Essential Air Service flyer Cape Air to get to specialized care that can’t be found in the area.

Reiter and Daniel said they are glad Cape Air is around to help people like that, but telehealth has been a huge help as well in addressing transportation issues.

Daniel said telehealth services are especially important to young people who recently moved to Havre because many have trouble finding a new therapist, just because it can be daunting to do that while adjusting to a new environment on top of dealing with whatever mental health issues they have, which causes many to fall through the cracks and not get help.

Daniels also praised the work of the Suicide Awareness Coalition, a sort of subcommittee of the LAC, which has been running the Suicide Awareness Walk in Havre for years.

Despite the good work being done, they said, there are still a lot of issues surrounding mental health in the community that need to be addressed somehow.

Reiter said Bullhook has seen a marked increase in substance abuse among teenagers which is extremely concerning, and drug abuse is still a huge issue in the community in general, particularly with methamphetamine.

Daniel talked about a school-based services program which provided federal money that allowed nearly every school to hire mental health counselors and interventionists. She said the program recently became difficult to use, because the state used to provide the match money for grants in the program, but now the schools themselves need to provide it, which they generally can’t afford to do.

“(The program) had it’s flaws, but at least it provided some in school services for kids who qualified under serious emotional disturbance,” she said.

Daniel said the area may also suffer from a general shortage of mental health care because so many providers have full schedules and waiting lists for new patients. This is on top of the fact that the area has no practicing psychiatrists at all.

Daniel and Reiter said younger psychiatrists often came to Havre for a few years because working in a rural area makes it easier to pay of student loan debt, but that hasn’t happened for a while now.

Daniel said some smaller mental health care organizations have expanded to the region, which has helped.

She also said members of the LAC have been trying to fill the gaps and raise awareness through mental health first aid and QPR trainings.

Reiter also talked about the LAC’s partnership with the Montana Peer Network, which she said has been a huge help to the community.

While the subject of the conversation focused on the efforts of the LAC, Reiter did take some time to answer questions about Bullhook’s capabilities when it comes to addressing the communities mental health needs.

She said the guiding philosophy of Bullhook attempts to address the tendency for mental health issues to further complicate general health care needs.

Reiter said it’s very frequent that when people come in for mental health reasons they have other issues that need to be addressed and quite often it’s mental health issues that are preventing these other problems from being taken care of.

“People don’t go to the dentist because they have anxiety or other mental health issues going on,” she said. “… Our goal is to treat the whole person.”

She also said that, while the center does everything it can to make sure cost isn’t a barrier for mental health care and are able to help many navigate that issue, it’s always an issue.

Daniel and Reiter both said the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid Expansion are vital to keeping as many people getting the help they need as possible.

“Keeping Medicaid Expansion is very important, and the ACA,” Daniel said. “A lot of people wouldn’t have any coverage at all if it weren’t for those two.”

Reiter said a substantial amount of people are getting help at Bullhook who would not be able to if it weren’t for these programs.

“They would not come, because they couldn’t cover the cost,” she said.