Senator Tim Johnson is among the many folks mentioning mental health in the same breath as gun issues in discussions of policy responses to school shootings. Increasing mental health services is going to take more mental health service providers. How many more do we need?
The Department of Health and Human Services tracks health professional shortages. Given a target ratio of one practitioner 10,000 population, the United States is short 6,052 mental health care professionals. That shortage affects 3,801 "Health Professional Shortage Areas" that include 90.5 million people: in other words, about 3 in 10 Americans live in places where there aren't enough mental health care providers.
55% of the shortage areas are rural. 73% of the practitioners needed would have to go practice in rural areas to fill these shortages.
In South Dakota, 50% of us live in areas that don't meet the 1:10,000 practitioner-population ratio. That's the third-highest percentage of unserved population in the nation, behind only Wyoming (58%) and Arizona (70%). According to the HHS calculations, South Dakota needs 35 more mental health practitioners. If we're talking licensed doctoral-level professionals, we're talking salaries of $86,000 per year. That's $3 million for the whole corps of new psych recruits.
Hmm... Governor Daugaard is willing to pay an out-of-state company $5 million to recruit workers. Why not cut out the middleman and just spend that money to hire the mental health care providers we need?
Of course, it's possible these numbers are based on an institutional lowballing of the need for mental health care. HHS sets the target ratios for primary care doctors at 2,000 to 1 and dentists at 3,000 to 1. Maybe saying that Lake County needs six doctors, four dentists, and just one psychologist or counselor indicates that we are underestimating the real need for mental health services.
Whatever policy options we choose to address our fears of violence, they won't come for free. If we want stronger mental health programs, we're going to need more mental health professionals. And those professionals are going to cost money.
Raises taxes from the religion industry, from the sales of guns, video games that glorify violence, and from legal cannabis.
Legislatures are going to have to define a new normal for which mental illnesses preclude ownership. First: expect them to exempt themselves from those guidelines.
And, btw: I am buying more military-style firearms.
Cory several of the top paid South Dakota government employees are shirnks making over $200,000 a year. Bibles are cheaper.