By Kim Palchikoff
Mental Health Awareness Month arrives this year with Nevada facing a crisis it has failed to handle in the past and remains ill-prepared to deal with now.
You don’t need to read reports and statistics on the coronavirus pandemic to know that the millions of Americans without a job, paycheck and a way to survive paints a grim picture in everyone’s crystal ball.
Unemployment depression. Trauma. PTSD. Anxiety. Mood swings. Insomnia. Anger issues. Grief. Sadness. Desperation. The list goes on.
People are fighting with spouses over every little thing, especially finances and the fear of becoming homeless. People are lining up to get free groceries. Domestic violence is quickly rising dramatically and there are not enough shelters for victims.
Now medical experts are talking about another pandemic hitting the U.S. and it’s not the second wave of COVIC-19 that they predict might return in the fall.
It refers to the widespread, dismal state of Nevada’s and the nation’s mental health, which not only is hitting Americans hard right now, it’s going to be a silent killer for years to come.
A three-month rent- and mortgage-eviction moratorium Gov. Steve Sisolak announced in April doesn’t mean people don’t have to ultimately pay up. While helpful in the short term, it just postpones the inevitable. Come July, Nevadans who haven’t paid their housing bills over the past 90-days are going to have to pony up four months-worth of payments, plus pay all their other bills put on hold – energy, phone, car insurance. If they can’t pay for their housing and get evicted, that eviction stays on their credit report for six years, making it difficult to find another place to live, Sure, companies nowadays are sounding super nice. Eventually they’re going to want their money.
In Nevada, our residents’ collective mental health is going to get grim. To start, Nevada ranks 51st in 15 categories, according to the national policy organization Mental Health America. According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide is the leading cause of death for Nevadans aged 12-19. More senior citizens die by suicide in the Silver State than any other state in the nation.
And those numbers are going to get worse as time goes on. I’ve spent decades battling my own bipolar disorder. I know what it’s like to live with long term mental health issues; they can destroy a person’s life.
To his credit, Gov. Sisolak has listened closely to his medical advisers on issues from whether to extend the stay-at-home mandate to when to open businesses or how many tests are needed. Now he needs a mental-health advisory committee made up of our state’s behavioral specialists to come up with a plan for how Nevada is going to cope emotionally with the coronavirus, now and in the future.
First on the agenda: Figure out a way to address Nevada’s mental health without making drastic cuts to the Health and Human Services budget. The HHS pays for Nevada’s mental health and Medicaid services. Making severe cuts is like sending someone to work in a meatpacking plant that’s infested with COVID-19. That’s not a plan at all. That is a recipe for human disaster and a perfect plan for increasing the state’s dire suicide rate. I’d like to see more money in the state budget dedicated to Nevada’s office of suicide prevention
One great step Gov. Sisolak has taken recently was to help create the Battle Born Medical Corps, which in part is designed to recruit health professionals around the U.S. to work in Nevada. They recommended waiving the state’s rigid licensure requirement for practicing health and mental-health professionals who come from out of state. I hope this remains in place forever more, making it easier to recruit new mental-health talent to Nevada. There’s also the State Emergency Registry of Volunteers-Nevada (SERV-NV), for social service volunteers. Keep in mind, mental health issues can take a long time to address. Brains don’t usually fix themselves quickly.
This year mental-health awareness month is a trying time for a lot of people. When it comes to mental health, Nevada is not just a state; it’s a train wreck. Just as Gov. Sisolak is putting a lot of thought into how to save Nevadans from the coronavirus, he needs to think about how Nevadans are going to cope with what’s going on in their heads before it’s too late.
No Stigma Nevada is a mental health column published throughout the state. Author Kim Palchikoff can be reached at palchikoff@gmail.com.
