I’ve been practicing psychiatry in Lansing for more than two decades. I’ve chosen to stay here and raise my family here because I love this community, its small-town feel and the way our neighbors take care of each other. But we need to do more as our community confronts a burgeoning mental health crisis that we simply don’t have the resources to handle.
Every day I see as many as 30 patients walk through the doors of the University of Michigan Health-Sparrow Lansing emergency department needing help with an urgent mental health issue. The landscape has never been more challenging.
Since 2020, the emergency room team has evaluated some 4,500 behavioral health patients annually and is on pace to see even more in 2024. These are our friends, relatives and children who are struggling with severe illnesses and devastating symptoms, ranging from depression and anxiety to psychosis and addiction. They often are desperate and struggling to survive.
Too often, they are stuck sitting in the emergency waiting room, unable to access the care and support they need. It takes an average of 3-4 days to find a bed equipped to care for them, forcing patients to delay treatment or travel far from home to receive care.
Our behavioral health facilities in the Lansing area are overburdened and overflowing, and emergency rooms aren’t designed or equipped to treat severe behavioral health issues. The influx into emergency rooms has a cascading effect, impacting our emergency medicine clinicians’ ability to care for other patients who also need emergency services.
An emergency department also can’t provide comprehensive services that individuals struggling with mental health may need for long-term recovery, such as affordable housing and employment assistance.
The reasons for our mental health crisis are many, including an intensifying drug crisis and rising adolescent mental health challenges. These illnesses can be successfully treated — if we have the needed resources in our community. Unfortunately, today, Lansing doesn’t have the beds, the doctors or the support staff to meet the immense need we face.
Many people in our community are working hard to help address this crisis. I applaud UM Health-Sparrow’s plan to be part of this solution by creating a new, much-needed 120-bed behavioral health facility in Lansing. We can no longer look away as our community hits a breaking point: we need to acknowledge the facts and commit to working together toward a brighter future, where all of our community members can access the mental health care they need.
Dr. John Baker is a psychiatrist and medical director of behavioral health at UM Health-Sparrow.