Yet another deficiency has been uncovered in Virginia’s mental health services network: not enough nurses.
State mental hospitals are struggling with high turnover rates. To fill vacancies, they are hiring nurses from overseas.
Problems with Virginia’s mental health system seem to be legion.
One danger is that Virginians — leaders and taxpayers alike — may feel so bludgeoned by the litany of ills that they begin to believe that the problems are insurmountable. Why struggle to solve an unsolvable dilemma?
The antidote is to believe that progress is attainable, as, of course, it is. We might not be able to eliminate every problem right now, but we can take steps in the right direction.
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There is also the mistaken impression that many people have that mental health issues are “someone else’s” problem, or are something sufferers brought on themselves with drugs, alcohol or other behaviors. While some mental health illnesses can be triggered by drug or alcohol use, the vast majority are hereditary illnesses — those like breast cancer, kidney failure and other common genetically linked diseases that individuals are predisposed to.
Aside from that, mental health issues are everyone’s problem. Aside from the considerable human suffering, the financial cost to taxpayers is staggering in lost work, social services and other public costs. Conversely, investments in mental health care have an enormous return, again, in the form of lives and costs saved.
And every positive step can reduce suffering, prevent tragedies and, yes, save lives.
The nursing shortage is only the most recent difficulty to be revealed.
At the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents, located in Staunton, vacancies were as high as 60 percent in April among direct care registered nurses, according to a high-ranking state health official. At another facility, the rate was 46 percent.
Add to that the fact that many hospitals are full to overflowing, with occupancy rates as high as 95 to 99 percent, and you have the reality of a heavy workload coinciding with a staffing shortage.
Providing mental health care can be a stressful job at the best of times. It often requires a special sort of practitioner with a special vein of compassion for people who are mentally ill.
When the job becomes even more hectic due to staffing shortages, a vicious cycle ensues, inducing more people to resign under the burdens, and worsening those burdens for the people who are left — including the patients.
And all this is occurring against the backdrop of a widespread nursing shortage overall in health care — not just in the area of mental health.
Although the American Association of Colleges of Nursing reported a 3.6 percent enrollment increase in 2016, “this increase is not sufficient to meet the projected demand for nursing services,” says the organization’s website.
The American Nurses Association attributes that demand to the aging of the current workforce, the growing health care needs of baby boomers, and the fact that health-care reforms have given many people new access to care.
For Virginia’s mental health system, some relief will be provided by the pay raises approved this year by the General Assembly. State employees received a 3-percent raise, and the legislature approved another 2 percent for high-turnover jobs — including many health-care positions. The raises still don’t still bring pay up to the level offered in the private sector. But any step in the right direction is positive. We must keep moving forward, however incrementally, to improve the lives of some of our commonwealth’s most vulnerable residents.
Adapted from The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress