David George, EastIdahoNews.com
IDAHO FALLS — A protest on the Broadway Bridge in Idaho Falls on Saturday was organized in support of saving peer support behavioral health services from federal funding cuts.
Several hundred community members gathered with signs and messages including “Save Behavioral Health,” “You Can’t Say You Care But Cut Care,” and “Cutting Mental Health Is Not The Option.” Many participants also signed a petition started by advocate Stephanie Taylor Thompson entitled “Save Behavioral Health In Idaho” on the Change.org website.
According to protest organizers Cecilia Buell and Lisa McCullar, the issue centers around federal funding cuts to peer support programs across Idaho. The loss of funding has severe consequences for both patients and mental health services providers across the region.
PHOTO GALLERY | Rally in support of mental health services in Idaho
“Peer supporters are people who have walked through the mental health system themselves who get credentialed through a training and then they’re able to go on to support other people that are still struggling with mental health issues, using their own lived experience,” explained Buell, a credentialed peer support specialist works for Still Waters Counseling in Blackfoot. “(Peer support) is different from clinical therapy because sometimes clinical providers aren’t always able to utilize their own lived experience to help others. The service is really saying to patients, ‘Hey, I’ve been there, and we can do this together.’”
David George, EastIdahoNews.com
According to many mental health specialists at the protest, peer support is an evidence-based treatment program, proven and backed by statistics that show dramatically reduced hospitalization, relapse, incarceration, and suicide rates.
Idaho has recently eliminated or reduced nearly one-quarter of its total Medicaid mental health services in the past year.
RELATED | Idaho’s mental health services slashed, prompting march and fast-growing petition
“It seems to me that (the federal funding cuts) is a purely financial decision, but I do not think that it helps the state financially in the long run,” said Derek Emery with Full Spectrum Psychology. “When I first started here in the state working doing mental health, a client could get up to 40 hours of mental health services, including peer support. In my experience, when we were doing that, it was very rare for us to have any hospitalizations. That’s not the case now, or moving forward. The frequency of hospital stays has already tripled.”
Buell, McCullar, Perry, Thompson, and other mental health providers hope that the community will rally and voice opposition to defunding needed behavioral health programs across the state.
“I think what everyone in the community could all take away from this is if you really care about mental health and people that struggle with mental health, whether it’s suicide, depression, anxiety, or other disorders, then you can’t cut their care,” McCullar with J&M Mental Health in Blackfoot. “If you care about them, you can’t cut their care.”
David George, EastIdahoNews.com
Melanie Mason, a peer support worker with Human Dynamics and Diagnostics, mentioned how her peer support clients are alarmed at the sudden cuts in services.
“When I told one of my 80 year patients, he was literally in tears. He’s just devastated. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do without support,” she said.
Thompson initiated the petition in her role as an advocate, partly because her son receives peer support services through a local service provider. Juvenile programs have not been affected by the funding cuts.
“You’ll hear people receiving peer support services say that they get to go out and have fun, but what that really means is they get to go out in the community and connect and not be isolated anymore,” Thompson said. Loneliness leads to suicide. When you take away people’s support, they start isolating and they lose hope.”
Participants hope community members will call on public officials to restore federal funding.
“We have a great community. Idaho is wonderful. This community is wonderful. We can do better, and we should be supporting the people who can’t necessarily speak up right now,” Thompson remarked. “Everybody has a voice. We’re just here to help elevate it.”
=htmlentities(get_the_title())?>%0D%0A%0D%0A=get_permalink()?>%0D%0A%0D%0A=htmlentities(‘For more stories like this one, be sure to visit https://www.eastidahonews.com/ for all of the latest news, community events and more.’)?>&subject=Check%20out%20this%20story%20from%20EastIdahoNews” class=”fa-stack jDialog”>