Thrive Recovery Community Organization Executive Director Phil Stucky said harm reduction methods, like distributing free naloxone, can help people struggling with addiction in Southern Indiana. Staff photo by Libby Cunningham
SOUTHERN INDIANA — Indiana’s first free naloxone vending machine, located at the entrance to the emergency room at Clark Memorial Hospital, has given out more than 3,300 Narcan kits since its inception in January.
Thrive Recovery Community Organization Executive Director Phil Stucky would know.
His Scott County-based non-profit works to help people with substance use disorder and focuses on things like harm reduction, which is why the free doses of the opioid antidote are available in the first place.
He said a similar vending machine with the opioid overdose antidote in Scott County dispensed 650 doses of Narcan between June and last month and other resources in the county gave out an additional 320 doses.
Members of the state’s recovery community, along with health care officials, hope that a new report on the state of mental health and resources in the state will help people get and stay clean while addressing mental illness along the way.
“The majority of people have co-curing disorders, they have mental health and substance use disorder concerns,” said Brandon George, vice president for Recovery and Advocacy Programs and Director of Indiana Addiction Issues Coalition with Mental Health America of Indiana.
“I think we really saw the substance use disorder numbers and the overdose numbers (increase during the pandemic.) The mental health piece, we are just starting to see the cracks in the foundation here, the wave is just swelling right now.”
The Indiana Behavioral Health Commission released its first report on the state of mental health in the state earlier this fall. The commission was established during the state’s 2020 legislative session to address mental illness in Indiana. Two years later the report shows a need for increased services and funding statewide.
According to the findings, about 20% of Hoosiers experience a mental health condition each year, however less than half get the help that’s needed. About 40% of incarcerated people have mental health issues and nearly 80% of Indiana residents with serious mental illness aren’t employed.
Untreated mental illness is costing Indiana big bucks too, with the report noting the state loses more than $4 billion dollars each year due to lack of treatment. An increase of nearly 60% in funding for mental health programs is suggested by the findings to pay for solutions to the crisis.
One of those solutions would be expanding on the current mental health crisis hotline. When people call 988 they’re connected over the phone with someone who can help them. The study proposes Indiana take it a step further and provide people with someone to respond to the call and a safe place for people to receive help.
“One of the things I’m most excited about is the idea of making the new 988 line much more robust,” George said. “One of the things we talk about pretty regularly is about treating mental health and substance use disorder as much as a public health issue, that it is, and not as much as a public safety issues. We’ve been screaming for years we can’t arrest our way out of this but yet we keep trying to do just that. So 988, it’s a suicide crisis line right now. It just takes calls and so having the ability to actually expand mobile response teams and crisis response teams (is huge.)” The report estimates it would cost around $130 million each year to sustain these services and said Medicaid can pay for part of it, with a $1 surcharge on telephone bills funding a piece as well.
George is in long-term recovery and said had these services been around when he was going through his addiction it would’ve been helpful. “If I would’ve been diverted or deflected into support at that younger age before my addiction got much much worse, I think there’s certainly a chance we could’ve shaved some years of that misery,” he said.
Clark County Health Officer and Indiana EMS Chief Medical Director Eric Yazel said the report is groundbreaking.
“I really think Clark County is well-positioned to integrate with exactly what’s in that report,” he said, adding the resources are here to get teams mobilized to help with mental health calls. “A mental health issue may not need 911. It may need the resources, someone to talk to. EMS can play a real pivotal role in that. Figuring out how to do that better is a win for everybody.”
Yazel said combined with the naloxone vending machine at Clark Memorial Hospital, he estimates 4,000 t0 4,500 doses of Narcan have been given out in Clark County this year.
“As long as people are taking it and having it on hand, that’s what those are there for,” Yazel said. “The big onus is what we do after someone gets Narcan’d and that’s something all communities, including ours, need to improve on.”
The report also recommends providing a sustainable infrastructure to support and expand certified community and behavioral health clinics statewide. The findings show this could greatly expand access to mental health care and decrease wait times for appointments drastically. It also suggests the state increases mental health courts and services provided to people who are incarcerated.
Services to reduce recidivism are already in motion in Southern Indiana.
Thrive Recovery Community Organization is running the Integrated Re-entry and Correctional Support program at the Scott County Jail with the goal of providing inmates with addiction and mental health services as soon as they’re booked in and moving those services through the process with them once they leave incarceration.
Thrive’s Stucky said the need for these services in Indiana is dire and addiction is touching people it hasn’t in the past.
“So right now everything has fentanyl in it...the fake OxyContin that are getting out there,” he said “They’re not your everyday (drug) users they’re not the people you run into every day. These are your high schoolers, these are not your everyday users.”
He said fentanyl, carfentanil, and the use of opioid ISO is increasing in the area. If the state takes action on the items listed in the mental health report Stucky said it would have a large impact on people who need help in the region right now.
“(We need) to be getting the conversation out, getting out harm reduction supply kits and making people stay as safe as possible (if they’re using,)” he said.
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