City Commission - Regular Meeting

Well, we're into the month of July, and we've got Ms. Deb Johnson with us to talk to us about a number of wonderful things that are happening. Welcome back to the Focus Set.

Thanks for having me back.

So soon. So soon is absolutely correct. Deborah is the CEO of St. Clair County Community Mental Health, and the first thing we want to talk about this month is National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. What's that all about?

Well, it's a perfect opportunity to talk to people and kind of raise awareness about the differences. There are cultural issues and all kinds of differences. And it's a reminder that everyone does not experience mental health issues in the same way. And it's especially different certain cultural groups experience things differently. They also, stigma is different for sure in certain cultural groups, we know that. And even though I'm talking sometimes about maybe within the black community, Hispanic, within the men's community, because for men, stigma is more of an issue typically than for women. So, but it's important that we, and we know that mental health conditions do affect everybody from all backgrounds and that disparities still exist. Disparities, including in treatment and in access to care. especially in some of the communities that have been more marginalized or maybe not with as easy of access to services or insurance or the ability to pay for the service or things like that so we know that we need to continue to uh normalize the conversation about mental health issues we need to in that mental health or I should say mental illness and diagnosis, they don't discriminate. Any socioeconomic backgrounds, very wealthy people, very poor people, every different culture, things like that, not just women, not just men. And so it's important that we make sure everybody understand how they can.

And the next one is part of really tails off of this one, building inclusivity and accessibility for mental health care. So they all sort of tie together.

Yeah, we really want a more inclusive community. We want a community that is accepting of everyone, regardless of their background, regardless of the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, any of those things. We want people to be inclusive. We want people to welcome people into the community. And we want people to receive whatever treatment that they need. And we want them to know how to access the services, all those kinds of things. And we also know that Representation matters sometimes. Sometimes it's important if there are no people of color, sometimes people of color are like, why do I want to go there? Right. And so some of those kinds of things are important in the advertising, in the actual people providing services. And it's not to say that you have to have dark skin to provide treatment to a person with dark skin. That's not the case. Right. It needs to just be more representative of the people that we're serving. And so that's what we strive for. We strive for that kind of inclusivity and diversity, I guess, in our workforce, in our communities.

National Hire a Veteran Day. That's a big one.

That is a big one, big one. We try to promote that every year. We've been doing a lot more things to support our veterans. In fact, we have a veterans navigator. Her name is Wendy Martindale. She is a veteran herself. We have a fantastic veteran peer support specialist. His name is Victor Polito. Victor was a Marine. Wendy was in the Navy. And that has started with a grant from MDHHS a number of years ago. But the original intent was to help veterans who maybe need to get connected to services, mental health services, but also entitlements. I think I shared a story before. It's my favorite story about Wendy. Well, I have two of them, but I know we don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to tell you one. But there was a veteran who had severe PTSD. He was in active duty and he would not leave his house for anything, which means if you don't leave your house and get the assessment before telehealth was a thing, this happened about 10, well, it happened before COVID actually. And so Wendy couldn't get him to get the examination he needed to get his entitlements. He was entitled to a lot of the money from the Veterans Administration. He didn't even have his insurance or anything. So she ended up just taking an iPad at that point into the home, asked our psychiatrist. Oh, wonderful. Yeah, asked our psychiatrist if he would get on his iPad and do a psychiatric evaluation, all that stuff. And long story short, she was able to get all the entitlements he deserved for 11 years retroactive. Wow. And now he does leave the house. Wow. He's getting services. And his family wrote the most beautiful letters because they were just at a loss. Like, how can we want to help him? So anyways, but the thing about hiring veterans, too, is that veterans, especially when they come back from active duty, they're used to a lot of structure, things like that. And so getting a job helps provide that needed structure. But they're, for the most part, great employees. And so they're used to following the rules, doing what they need to do, all those kinds of things. And so we hope that people will give veterans a chance, even if they're dealing with some mental health issues. Because PTSD, that is pretty prevalent among our veterans. Sometimes substance uses as well, because that was what has been used to maybe self-medicate. And we know that a lot of our veterans have seen things we could not even imagine. Right.

All right. Well, that's a good one. The importance of connection and community. That all ties together. Is that part of this?

No, that's still out of that, but it's just where can people go when they need help. You can flash our numbers up. If you're in crisis, please call our crisis line at 810-966-2575. And then, of course, the access to services, we changed that number not that long ago, but it's 810-488-8888.

I love that number. Simple number.

It's a bunch of eights. It's four and a bunch of eights. Right.

You mentioned that there's something coming up in Lansing that you want people to be aware of.

It's House Bill 6022, and if you go to our Facebook page, you will see an advocacy, we call it Action Alert, where if you agree with the position, you click in, and then you can add your own story to it, or not, just click in and send it off to our legislators. But basically, this House Bill, they're trying to fast track it through, and it's basically about what they're calling the mental health framework, and we're calling that a solution trying to find a problem. So what they're saying is that people with mental health issues have been hanging out in ERs for far too long, that the mental health people are not coming in and doing those crisis screenings in a timely fashion. That is absolutely untrue. We have a certain timeframe and we have indicators that we have to report on to the state of Michigan, all across the state. We get in there, we do the assessments, but then there's no beds for them. So yeah, they're sitting in ERs, but it's not because we're not assessing them, it's because there isn't a bed for them or It's because some of the private hospitals refuse to take them because the acuity or the severity of their symptoms are so bad they don't want to deal with that. So it adds additional steps in there for people, and it would make access even more cumbersome for people. So it's kind of a complicated story, but if you look at the action alert... And they can look on your webpage, which is... Well, they can look at our Facebook for the action alert. It's probably also on our website, which is scccmh.org. They can also go to our state associations page. That's the Community Mental Health Association of Michigan. So it's cmham.org.

Okay. Always lots of stuff going on in Lansing. House Bill 6022 is what people should look out for. And when are they going to take some action on that?

I don't know. They've been trying to fast track it because, of course, there's an election coming up in November, governor election and a lot of other legislators. So I think they're trying to fast track it through. It has not reached the Senate yet. It's still in the House.

Debra, enjoy July.

You too.

Always a pleasure. Thank you. Always a lady with lots of information, Ms. Debra Johnson, CEO of the St. Clair County Community Mental Health. Thank you for coming in. That's about it for this edition of the Focus Program. Thanks very much for tuning in. Until next time, I'm Paul Duggan. See you soon.

Thanks for watching Focus with Paul Dingaman. Focus is produced at the CTV Community Television Studios in St. Clair. For over 20 years, CTV has captured the moments that matter to our community.

The preceding program was produced by CTV Community Television. CTV Community Television is supported by the cities of Marine City and St. Clair. East China Township, Cotterville Township, and the East China School District.