Funding

The maladies are mostly invisible, but the seriousness of the diseases are as dibilitating as any severe physical injury.

"If you see somebody in a wheelchair, it's easy to see what their issues would be," says Jacqueline Columbia, the director of clinical and community services for the local Board of Child Care. "For behavioral health, you can't see it."

Behavioral health includes mental health, cognitive disabilities, drug abuse, alcoholism and other needs. Those who suffer from these diseases are a forgotten group, who are vulnerable and do not advocate for themselves, Columbia says.

And experts say the lack of comprehensive behavioral-health services has reached crisis level in the Eastern Panhandle.

Perhaps most importantly, the amount of funding for behavioral-health care in Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties is disproportionately low for the region's population.

Local officials are asking legislators to work toward securing funding for the development of a comprehensive array of behavioral-health services that is proportionate to the tri-county's population.

Berkeley County now is the second most populous county in West Virginia, and Jefferson and Morgan counties always are among the fastest growing counties in the state.

Meanwhile, other parts of the state are losing population as fast if not faster than the tri-county. The simple solution is to redistribute the available funds on a more equitable, per capita basis. Such a remedy would not increase the overall cost to the state.

Other funding problems include:

Different requirements for in-state and out-of-state providers regarding service provisions and reimbursements that often favor out-of-state providers;

Inadequate funding and reimbursement is partially responsible for a shortage of behavioral-health professionals, which results in noncompetitive salaries;

Increased ethnic and language diversity throughout the tri-county places more pressure on the delivery of behavioral-health care services; and

Restructuring Medicaid, the primary source of funding for some programs, in the mid-1990s resulted in many programs being discontinued or greatly restricted.

The changes in the Medicaid funding "created a lot of service gaps, so now there's unmet needs," Columbia says.

There remains a social stigma attached to behavioral-health issues, but the consequences of not treating these diseases can be fatal. Left untreated, behavioral-health issues can lead to increases in incarcerations, suicides, teenage pregnancy, excessive employee absenteeism, underemployment, unemployment and higher school dropout rates, Columbia explains.

The Journal joins with the Eastern Panhandle Health and Human Services Collaborative to urge our local legislators to work together to address this very important topic.

For more information about behavioral-health care in the tri-county or to help lobby legislators, Columbia can be

reached at (304) 267-3311 or jcolumbia@BoardofChildCare.org