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Trumbull County reaches record number of mental-health admissions
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Trumbull County admissions to state mental hospitals have tripled since 2010, reaching what the Trumbull County Board of Mental Health and Recovery has called an “unprecedented” use of such facilities.
April Caraway, executive director of Trumbull MHRB, attributed the increase to the Medicaid expansion from Gov. John Kasich that took effect Jan. 1, 2014.
The expansion allowed 563,000 more Ohioans to be covered by the federal health care program by lowering the requirements to include households with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty rate.
“A lot more people are seeking help than in the past,” she said of people with mental-health issues that sometimes lead to hospitalization. “Now, people are showing up seeking help. People were not seeking help because they did not have [health] insurance.”
Caraway said people in the mental-health field also refer to the “woodwork effect,” meaning that the publicity that comes from a change such as the Medicaid expansion brings people “out of the woodwork” to seek treatment who may have been eligible in the past but didn’t do anything about it.
“Every day, we’re enrolling more people [in Medicaid],” she said of the process that takes place at various agencies.
Caraway said she assumes the number of people being treated for mental-health issues also is on the rise at local hospitals, noting that ValleyCare Trumbull Memorial Hospital recently hired additional psychiatrists.
Statistics provided by Caraway indicate that 320 Trumbull County residents were admitted to state mental hospitals in fiscal year 2014, which began July 1, 2013. That is up 14 from the previous fiscal year and is the highest number in the county’s history, Caraway said.
The most-recent numbers show that there were 159 hospitalizations during the first half of the current fiscal year, indicating that the county is on pace to reach last year’s record number.