- May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, and the University of Michigan Health-Sparrow is doing its part to help meet the demands for services in our neighborhoods.
- They say they have been dealing with a high level of patients who have depression, severe anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders.
- Some of the community resources they are turning their focus on are therapy dogs, opening a new health clinic in Grand Ledge High School, and having nurses and techs trained in psychiatry to care for patients in the emergency room.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
"We will continue to look for ways to improve access and increase resources for those in need," said Chief Medical Officer Dr. Chandu Vemuri.
On Tuesday health officials with the University of Michigan Health-Sparrow held an event to discuss what they are seeing when it comes to the mental health crisis.
"We really have an increasing burden, a number of patients," said the Medical Director of UM Health-Sparrow Behavior Health Dr. John Baker.
They say they have been dealing with a high level of patients who have depression, severe anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders.
"We actually see from 50, 60, to 100 or more patients in the emergency room every day," Dr. Baker said.
The emergency department has seen around 4,500 behavioral health patients annually since 2020.
And they say they are on pace to see even more this year.
"This crisis not only affects patients but along with a critical shortage and behavioral health caregivers. It also poses significant challenges to health care infrastructure and the delivery of care overall, the treatment of behavioral health patients is a community issue," Dr. Vemuri said.
UM Health-Sparrow says about 1.7 million Michigan adults, children, and adolescents live with mental illness.
Ricarah Sunshine Riddle's son is one of those children.
She started noticing issues with her son when he was 2 years old.
"He has some specific diagnoses: post-traumatic stress disorder, general anxiety disorder, and sensory processing disorder. Any one of them alone e a lot but the combination of them as well can be very overwhelming for any person, a grown-up, let alone a child," Riddle said.
She is a parent navigating mental health services. She says being able to have a normal conversation about it normalizes the issue people face.
Also, invited in on the conversation was Carla Pretto
Executive director of the Association for Children's Mental Health.
"We are the statewide family network here in Michigan. We are all family members either with our own mental health lived experience or raising a child with mental health challenges," Pretto said.
And Carla has dealt with mental health challenges in her family firsthand.
Her daughter Taylor died by suicide at the age of 13.
She says educating families and hearing from them to help is important.
"What was helpful, what would have been helpful? And this is across the landscape of crisis intervention with the police, with the emergency department with the crisis response team, from all of these different aspects," Pretto said.
Some of the community resources UM Health-Sparrow is turning its focus on are therapy dogs, opening a new health clinic in Grand Ledge High School, and having nurses and techs trained in psychiatry to care for patients in the emergency room.
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