PORT ANGELES — The Olympic region has higher rates of substance abuse and mental illness than the state average, Clallam County commissioners heard Monday.
The region — defined as Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap counties — also lacks a medically assisted withdrawal-management facility to treat people with severe symptoms of chemical dependency, Olympic Community of Health officials said.
“That is, I think, a need for our region,” OCH Program Coordinator Mel Melmed told Clallam County commissioners.
Melmed and OCH Communications Coordinator Amy Brandt presented a 2021 behavioral health report for the three-county Accountable Community of Health region. The 28-page report is available on the Olympic Community of Health website, www.olympicch.org.
Commissioner Mark Ozias said he added the report to the Monday meeting agenda to help the board prioritize future allocations of COVID-19 relief funding.
“It’s certainly no surprise that behavioral health — in other words, mental health and substance use disorder — is likely going to be one of our priorities,” Ozias said.
“I thought that this report might help to provide some background and set the stage for that.”
The Olympic region had a 33.6 percent prevalence of mental illness for adults on Medicaid last year, the OCH study found. The state average was 31 percent.
Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap counties also had more substance use disorder among Medicaid-enrolled adults at 14.3 percent compared with the state average of 13.4 percent in 2020.
The study also found that Clallam County had higher rates of suicide and self-inflicted injury visits to the emergency room — 221 per 100,000 population — than Jefferson (155 per 100,000) or Kitsap (189 per 100,000) counties.
“Across the three-county region, 51 percent of emergency department visits related to suicide and self-harm were by individuals under the age of 29,” Melmed said.
“This data is from 2020, and we know that COVID and the isolation has been especially stressful for youth. So that essentially is one of the reasons that we’re seeing those higher numbers among youth.”
Commissioner Randy Johnson said he had seen conflicting data that suggests men older than 55 were the most likely to commit suicide.
“This included the self-harm, which is what’s different,” Melmed said. “There could be cutting. There could be other forms of self injury.”
Brandt said there had been a “heightened need for behavioral health services” during the pandemic.
“This report is ultimately a step forward towards understating the health of the Olympic region, which is Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap counties and the seven sovereign tribal nations,” Brandt said.
“It’s also an opportunity to learn from the many collaborative and innovative projects happening around the region, as we want to lift that work up and learn from the successes and build upon the strengths of our neighbors.”
The study found that Jefferson County had one mental health provider per 250 residents, better than the state average of one per 270. Clallam and Kitsap counties each had one mental health provider per 300 residents.
Kitsap County has 12 beds for drug and alcohol withdrawal management for people with mild to moderate symptoms, Melmed said. The North Olympic Peninsula has no beds available for people dealing with withdrawal.
“I will also point out that there are zero, no medically assisted withdrawal-management facilities operating in the Olympic region, and those are the ones where people would go if they have more severe withdrawal symptoms and they need medical management,” Melmed said.
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe has proposed a medication-assisted treatment (MAT) clinic in Sequim that has been challenged in court.
A lack of rural broadband internet access on the North Olympic Peninsula also was noted in the Olympic Community of Health study.
Seventeen percent of Jefferson County — and 15 percent of Clallam County — lacked download speeds of at least 25 megabytes per second compared with 3 percent in more urban Kitsap County.
“That is another area that we identified that there is opportunity,” Melmed said.
The executive summary to the report highlighted three recommendations. They were:
• Advocate for behavioral health reimbursement rates that are based on actual costs and salaries.
• Provide advocacy to increase salaries for behavioral health providers commensurate with their education, training and the cost-saving benefit their services provide.
• Prioritize innovative and creative transportation solutions to improve access to care across the region.
Ozias said he would invite Peninsula Behavioral Health Chief Executive Officer Wendy Sisk, North Olympic Healthcare Network Director Dr. Michael Maxwell and others to a future work session to “understand what kind of advocacy would be of most use to them.”
“It would seem that the advocacy arena is probably where we have the most potential to impact as opposed to direct support,” Ozias said.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
