On August 27, 2024, Knox County, Ohio, marked a significant milestone by beginning work on a project that could make a meaningful difference for many of Central Ohio’s most in-need citizens: a 24/7 mental health and addiction crisis center, built in collaboration with nonprofit Behavioral Health Partners. Aiming to address the region’s ongoing mental health challenges, the center, to be named Knox County Behavioral Health Crisis Center, is being built with a combination of private and public funds, including $3 million from the state government of Ohio.
Helping Those in Need
The center will provide a round-the-clock haven for those suffering from acute mental health episodes or seeking help coping with drug withdrawals. The center will be staffed by a nurse practitioner, a psychiatrist, trained peer support specialists, and a variety of credentialed counselors and nurses who have been certified through rigorous mental health degrees, like an online MSN-PMHNP program. They will work together to offer a calming environment for people in crisis who might otherwise visit emergency departments, sometimes ending up with referrals to psychiatric hospitals — which often provide care that is more intensive than what many individuals require.
This center strives to offer a more holistic understanding and personal touch to mental healthcare at a time when the opioid epidemic is reaching new highs in the area. According to the CDC, Ohio has one of the highest rates of drug-related fatalities in the US. This worrying statistic is part of a broader problem in rural states, where misuse of and addiction to both prescription and non-prescription opioids has become an epidemic. It’s generally recognized that the escalation in addiction and associated public health concerns has coincided with a broader, equally troubling ongoing mental health crisis striking the same areas. Addiction is known to share common risk factors with other chronic mental health-related issues and is often the result of another underlying mental health condition; as such, addressing these issues together is seen as a logical approach.
Knox County has been identified as a particular hotspot within Ohio in regard to this crisis: the county has a serious shortage of mental health professionals relative to the population. While Ohio as a state has a ratio of roughly one mental health professional per 3,000 residents, in Knox County, the ratio is roughly one per 12,000 locals. This dramatic shortfall, coupled with the county’s above-average rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide, underscores the importance of such a treatment center.
Long-Term Solutions
Given the statistics that indicate Ohio as a prime location for drug abuse and related deaths, addiction has been targeted as a particular pain point for the region. Studies have shown a strong correlation between addiction and crime and the necessity of addressing addiction as a systemic source of crime, with a focus on rehabilitation during the criminal justice process. While many criminals commit crimes of such a severe nature that the legal system leaves no choice but to incarcerate them, many studies show notable benefits to treating their addiction during their incarceration and lower recidivism for those who receive such treatment. Some studies even indicate that a broader societal shift towards addiction treatment as an alternative to imprisonment may lead to long-term cost savings for overburdened, under-financed criminal justice and public health systems by placing a focus on rehabilitation, reducing violence and associated behaviors in the long term, as opposed to focusing on getting criminals off the street.
As the saying goes, ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure.’ This is precisely the philosophy behind providing a center that seeks to offer a safe space for those in crisis to receive early intervention to act as a springboard for their long-term improvement.
The Root of the Problem
A quick look at the data shows a clear trend regarding the location of areas hit hardest by the drug overdose epidemic: the states hit hardest are clustered in America’s central and eastern states. While the collocation of states affected by the epidemic is clear, it doesn’t provide any real clarity as to the cause. However, states do have one thing in common: a loss of manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years. Based on research conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, a reputable Washington DC think tank, the states that have been hit hardest by the addiction crisis also happen to be precisely the same states that have seen the most dramatic outflow of manufacturing jobs since the turn of the century.
One report by the reputable policy research institute, the Cato Institute, details the outflow of manufacturing jobs from the US to developing countries like China and Mexico, where lower labor costs have traditionally incentivized investment into lower margin, high labor cost businesses like manufacturing, which become substantially more profitable when labor costs are reduced. While this dynamic seems fairly common sense, the implications are not straightforward, and possible solutions are more complex.
While job losses have, indeed, been massive, especially in the central and eastern states hit hardest by corresponding job losses and the ensuing hardships for their residents, losses for these states have, in many cases, resulted in gains for others. States like Georgia and California, while suffering substantially from losses in manufacturing jobs just like states like Ohio, have also benefited from the subsequent increase in international trade, given their status as homes to major ports for international shipping. California, in particular, has benefited from reduced hardware costs and international trade, playing host to most of the US’s now-dominant electronics and internet technology companies like Google and Apple, who have leveraged the resulting decreased cost of computers and other personal electronics to build global brands and complex business models relying on advertising, data accumulation, and, of course, precisely the sale of goods that might be too expensive to be profitable at the attractive prices enabled by more affordable overseas manufacturing. The resulting productivity of these companies, the increased global productivity enabled by affordable computing, and the scaling growth of the internet are substantial, though difficult to quantify.
While Cato discourages tariffs on foreign-made goods as a plausible solution, it suggests a wide range of alternatives, including competitive deregulation in the US to enable more competitive labor prices and government-funded programs aimed at helping people in affected areas acquire new skills that might be more useful in a globalized economy. Hopefully, in time, such solutions can be adopted to help enable a truly preventative approach to the mental health and addiction crisis facing the country. Until that day comes, centers like this are positioned to remain essential on the front lines of an ongoing struggle, providing a helping hand to those who need it most.
Published by Tom W.
