Kansas budget approves millions for mental health workforce development

Takeaways

• There are mental health workforce shortages across the country. Kansas is no exception
• Universities and service providers are teaming up to help get more staff in the field
• Kansas lawmakers approved almost $6 million for workforce development programs

Finding mental health professionals in Kansas is hard.

Crisis teams that talk down suicidal Wichitans struggle to fill evening shifts and mental health hospitals that can rescue someone from a crisis have open beds they can’t use because they don’t have enough staff.

States across the country can’t hire enough workers for critical mental health jobs. Those behavioral health professionals might work with suicidal people, help others battle addiction or offer intensive services to people who need hospital stays to weather psychotic episodes.

One in three Americans lives in an area with a mental health workforce shortage, but industry professionals worry that it will get worse without action.

Kansas providers are celebrating a small legislative victory, though. Gov. Laura Kelly approved a provision in the state budget that spends almost $6 million to train more mental health workers.

The money is directed at:

• Three psychiatric residents next year, with the goal of 15 new residencies throughout the state.
• Four addiction specialist fellowships. These workers help diagnose, treat and prevent addiction issues.
• A new forensic psychology degree. That would help train people who can use science to answer legal questions in court.
• Six psychology internships.
• Various programs to increase the number of physician assistants. That includes new postgraduate and doctorate programs at Wichita State University.
• Money to increase salaries and offer recruitment bonuses for nurses. The $2.3 million would increase salaries by $7,000 with a $2,500 recruitment or retention bonus.

Psychiatrists are in high demand. Fewer than 15 psychiatrists work across 26 mental health centers in the state. Those centers are going through a new licensing process that promises more money if certain services are offered. That would mean more nurses and case management.

Some universities are seeing a drop in enrollment for certain majors. Kansas State University has 100 fewer social work students in 2023 than it did in 2014, though other fields are seeing steady or climbing enrollment.

To further address the issue, providers and universities across the state are partnering to create the Kansas Behavioral Health Center of Excellence in Wichita to pool resources to draw more people to these jobs and reduce the mental health workforce shortage.

More money alone won’t solve the issue. It’ll help, said Alice Weingartner, chief strategy officer at the Community Care Network, but the problem eludes an easy fix.

“I wish it was just one thing,” she said. “There’s too many reasons why.”

Mental health professions don’t always pay well, some openings have brutal hours, and the jobs are stressful. The jobs attract people who want to help their community, but the poor benefits contribute to a struggle to keep those folks in the field.

Staff problems existed before the pandemic, but the global virus made some things worse. Many industries, not just mental health, saw higher levels of turnover and burnout as a result of the pandemic.

Mel Martin, director of training and development at Community Care, said the profession should talk to younger kids about the field. That’s as simple as going into middle school classrooms to talk about the work.

“When we think about mental health careers, we think about a model that has been in our heads for a long time,” Martin said. “We have a 50-minute therapy session with a therapist … (but current services) may look much different.”

The state is doing some things to improve this. The new money in the budget helps. More reform is needed, Martin said, and her group is working with the state to push for some changes.

This is also where the behavioral health center of excellence comes in.

Kyle Kessler, executive director of the Association of Community Mental Health Centers of Kansas, said he wants to “recreate the Menninger Clinic in the aggregate.”

The Menninger Clinic was an influential mental health center in Topeka that started a little over 100 years ago. Nurses, social workers, psychologists and all types of staff trained at the center. At one point, around a third of mental health professionals in the country had ties to Menninger, Kessler said.

It left Kansas for Texas in 2003 and left a gap in mental health services across the state. Kessler said the loss is “almost the equivalent of being in a substantial car wreck going 80 miles an hour.”

He doesn’t want to rebuild a large mental health campus because that’d take years to do. But he’d like educators at four-year colleges, community colleges and mental health providers to all work together.

The group only just started meeting and will spend the next few months outlining its vision and long-term goals.