Tri-Cities needs a recovery center now more than ever | Guest Opinion

The Tri-City area has needed a comprehensive Bi-County Recovery Center for a long time. However, the need is now more crucial than ever.

COVID-19 has tried the emotional patience and frazzled the nerves of everyone, but nowhere near the way it has harmed those struggling with substance abuse and mental health problems.

Community, healthy social contact, shared struggles and wisdom, and storytelling are at the heart of recovery from substance use disorder (SUD – addiction). People trying to gain or maintain recovery need people! For them, social contact is not a fun indulgence, it’s an imperative. And meetings on Zoom or other electronic platforms just don’t work as well.

We already know that COVID-19 has raised the rates of suicide in the Tri-Cities, as well as the rates of depression and relapse from SUD, according to local officials and treatment agencies. Across the country, hotlines for emotional and mental distress are up 350-900 percent, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

And things are about to get worse.

Behavioral health impacts follow disasters of all types with a lag time of 6-9 months post-initial outbreak, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

As a result, the Washington State Department of Health estimates that 2-3 million Washingtonians will experience behavioral health symptoms over the next 3-6 months, and half of those will develop a substance-related disorder! Suicides could increase by 103-412 people statewide.

A former high-ranking SAMHSA official captured this dark prognosis succinctly: “There is little question that the behavioral health footprint will be bigger than the acute medical footprint...and will last much longer...we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg.”

Unfortunately, we in the Tri-Cities are not in a good position to deal with the SUD and mental health deluge that is predicted.

We are the only major metropolitan area in the state that has no detoxification or residential/inpatient treatment facility for SUD.

Spokane, Yakima and even Wenatchee have resources that we do not, as do the cities of western Washington. This situation exists at the same time the Tri-Cities prides itself on being a medical center of excellence for the entire region. This condition is shameful, and we need to fix it.

A comprehensive Bi-County Recovery Center would benefit businesses, hospitals, police and sheriff agencies, families, taxpayers and addicted people themselves. Allowing our people to suffer from a terrible disease while they have nowhere to go except places with waiting lists far from home is no cause for community pride. All of us, as well as our large hospitals and other institutions, should be working as quickly as possible to correct this situation.

This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 1:40 PM with the headline "Tri-Cities needs a recovery center now more than ever | Guest Opinion."