(KNSI) – Sen. Tina Smith visited St. Cloud Friday morning and spoke with a roundtable of mental health experts from St. Cloud State University, CentraCare, Central Minnesota Mental Health Center and more about the barriers clients face when trying to get mental health care and the issues providers experience in trying to give those services.
“I’m quite sure that we are all sitting around this table because we believe that mental health care is health care,” Smith said at the beginning of the group’s discussion. “And that access to mental health care is just as important as access to any other kind of health care.
“The question on my mind and the work that I’m doing in Washington is: what can we do to systematically?” Smith continued. “Because I think we need to systematically change this — just as with childcare, this isn’t a little tweak here or a little tweak there. This is what we need to change systematically to address those barriers and access to care.”
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Roundtable participants spoke up about some of those issues, like the shortage of mental health care providers amid an uptick in demand for mental health services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are woefully unprepared to meet that demand,” said Dr. Richard Lee, CMMHC executive director.
Most speakers recognized that the pandemic has prompted more openness and willingness for people to talk about mental health than in the past. But, as Dr. Nicholas Newstrom, marriage and family therapy program director at SCSU, brought up, some people in marginalized communities aren’t as open about discussing mental health.
“I think you’re right in the sense that people are having these conversations in the dominant culture, but there are still a lot of gaps with minorities and minorities’ access to the mental health care at this point,” Newstrom said.
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“As a provider who is providing those services to to marginalized populations, there’s also a greater chance of burnout because you’re trying to serve communities where there’s such a paucity of services available to them,” said Shonda Craft, dean of SCSU’s School of Health and Human Services.
Smith introduced some bills in May aiming to address some mental health care barriers, like providing tuition reimbursement for people entering the mental health care field and expanding access to mental health services in school settings.
“I will be pushing for hearings in the [Senate] Health Committee, where I serve,” Smith said. “I’ll also be looking for ways to get them included in the big legislation that we are working on in Congress, including the American family plan that President Biden has proposed. There’s lots of work ahead, but I believe that there’s opportunity to get them passed.”
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