There are 850 citizens in Shoshone County to one mental health care provider, according to the Population Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin. In comparison, the statewide breakdown works out to about 420 people to one mental health provider across Idaho.

If that ratio of population size to mental health care providers is jarring to you, you’re not alone.

Meghann Johnson, the Social Service Manager at Shoshone Medical Center, said there have been a few causes both local and beyond leading to the shift in critical need for mental health resources locally.

“Mental health has changed significantly over the last few years. I remember when I started out in the Silver Valley, the hardest part of being a counselor was trying to get your schedule full. Now, it is the opposite,” Johnson said.

Waiting lists for local mental health providers can be up to a year and a half out. When there are emergencies, however, Johnson said Shoshone Medical Center’s mental health staff use triage to assess crisis cases and ensure they are added to counselor schedules.

“We have struggled significantly with meeting our community’s needs. We have two counselors and we’re currently trying to hire for a third,” Johnson said. “There’s a couple of things at play. We’ve seen the need for mental health treatment significantly grow with COVID and then pre-COVID, we also had Medicaid expansion, where people who weren’t previously able to access services suddenly were. Those two things in combination made it suddenly difficult for us to meet our community’s needs.”

The local factor that added to this perfect storm of mental health care coverage is that there are not many options for therapy. There are currently three main local agencies in Shoshone County aside from online counseling options: SMC, Courageous Together and Heritage Health.

“There are about eight counselors total in the Silver Valley. It’s been incredibly difficult,” Johnson said.

Much like a car needs to regularly be maintained by going through oil changes, your mental health also needs maintenance to avoid a major breakdown. When things get tough, however, sometimes the items on the hierarchy of needs require more immediate attention and mental health concerns are set aside to address at a later time. When the buildup of stress reaches a boiling point, it’s too late for just a simple tune-up, however.

Having fewer mental health providers in the area to help address the needs of the community also stretches thin local resources. That’s where SV CARES hopes to help. The nonprofit’s acronym stands for Community Advocates for Resilience and Emotional Support.

Siobhan Curet is one of the local workers brought on by AmeriCorps to help connect community members in need to the critical resources they can use and also pass along to their friends and neighbors who may be struggling. They have been finding ways to incentivize learning about local mental health and community resources by giving away items at events like the Mental Health Awareness Fair on Aug. 26.

SV CARES gave away more than 300 T-shirts promoting mental health positivity. Among the other giveaways, 100 backpacks full of school supplies, 20 free haircuts and more than 400 hot dogs were also given out to those in attendance. There were also 35 resource booths available to help address the gaps in their current coverage and needs.

“Our focus was to distribute resources to people and start networking in the community and to get people to know what is available to them. The rural situation can be really isolating,” Curet said.

Building up local mental health resources

One of Paige Olsen’s top priorities when she was made executive director of the Silver Valley Economic Development Corporation was to start finding the means to bridge the gap when it comes to mental health needs in the Silver Valley.

“I was constantly on the lookout for grants, initiatives and programs that could help me facilitate those needs, but always came up short when it came to capacity as I'm a one-woman show,” Olsen said.

In talks with Olsen’s connections across the state, programs under the purview of AmeriCorps and their Gem State Mental Health initiative kept coming up, and it seemed like a great way to channel direct resources to residents of Shoshone County.

“Between the University of Idaho extension's rural mental health initiative, AmeriCorps, knowing the right people, a lot of blood, sweat, tears and passion, Silver Valley CARES came to fruition, and it all happened over the course of about six months. It's been a crazy, but very rewarding ride,” Olsen said.

How to help

Free local trainings on critical topics such as suicide intervention, Alzheimer’s and dementia assistance, and mental health first aid are being offered through SV CARES in the coming months. To learn more about SV CARES, become a volunteer, or sign up for a future training, visit www.svcares.org.

With an overwhelming issue like mental health care, Curet said it’s easy to get overwhelmed, but something has to be done to start improving things for residents. If you can gain useful skills to help when a neighbor or loved one is in crisis, people are urged to take advantage of these offerings.

“It’s such a huge problem and there’s no easy fix, but we’ve got to start somewhere. I really hope that it will provide some hope for people,” Curet said.

By the numbers

Shoshone County: 850 people to one mental health provider

Idaho: 420 people to one mental health provider

United States average: 340 people to one mental health provider

Data year: 2022

Source: County Health Rankings & Roadmaps is a program of the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute.

If you go

What: SV CARES mental health training

When:

Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training — from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 14-15 at 125 McKinley Ave., Kellogg

Trust-Based Relational Intervention for vulnerable children — 9-11 a.m. Oct. 14. Location TBD, Kellogg

Alzheimer's and Dementia Presentation — 1-2 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8, at Kellogg Fire Department, 911 Bunker Ave., Kellogg

Mental Health First Aid — Jan. 12, 2024, location TBD, Kellogg

To learn more about Silver Valley CARES resources, visit www.svcares.org.