LEWIS CENTER — The message Tuesday night was simple, but not easy: mental health struggles are closer than many people realize, and talking about them matters.
The Delaware County Foundation and Delaware-Morrow Mental Health & Recovery Services Board hosted three speakers at Little Bear Golf Club for a program focused on mental health awareness, access to care and the importance of compassion.
A Kid Again Regional Vice President Brianne McFarland, System Medical Director of Psychiatric Emergency Services at OhioHealth, Dr. Megan Schabbing, and DMMHRSB Executive Director Deanna Brant all spoke at Little Bear Golf Club.
From a first-hand testimony of being a parent of a child going through mental health issues, to ways the medical industry and boards like DMMHRSB are improving care, the speakers shed some much-needed light on some of the darkest parts of life.
Chris Baker, CEO of the Delaware County Foundation, choked up a little after some powerful speakers — and summed up the evening perfectly.
“All of us carry some degree of internal pain,” he said.
“It might be because we’re a redhead, or we don’t speak the way we want to, or whatever the case may be. But the great lesson that I found is [that] each of us carries those things, and we all have to remember to be kind to ourselves and to each other.”
Almost too late
Brianne McFarland’s story about her son Jake’s battle with mental health challenges detailed the reality of parents simply feeling helpless at times when trying to help their child.
“That’s the reality of mental health. You don’t know what you don’t know until it’s almost too late,” she explained.
From hearing her son act out at school, seeing him look defeated, to eventually hearing Jake tell her he wanted to end his life, McFarland bravely walked through Jake’s struggles and the toll it took on her and her family.
“We searched for help, the right doctors, the right therapists, the right medications. There were times I didn’t even recognize my own son,” she said.
“There were occasions where we had to call the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office on our son … I can’t fully describe what it feels like to call the police on your own child.”
Life-saving resources
McFarland eventually took Jake to Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Behavioral Health Pavilion, where he spent a week right at the beginning of the pandemic.
Dr. Megan Schabbing highlighted some of OhioHealth’s resources, like being a leader in telemedicine and expanding emergency services to include psychiatrists in 2015.
She detailed how front-line psych social workers do the first assessment to determine if a mental emergency is psychiatric or not before getting doctors like Schabbing involved.
When Jake came home from care, McFarland recalled someone from the hospital telling her to “suicide proof” her home.
“She said, remove the cords, lock up the medications, take the strings out of his clothes,” McFarland said.
No matter what McFarland did, even if she wrapped her house in bubble wrap, it felt like there wasn’t enough she could do alone.
But after a long search, she found the help her son needed from school and county programs, DMMHRSB, Helpline, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and more.
“That support made the difference because today, at 22 years old, Jake has just graduated this month from Geneva College with a degree in social services with a minor in criminal justice,” McFarland said.
“He achieved his dream of playing college baseball, but more importantly, he found his purpose. He now wants to work in mental health to help kids who are where he once was. Because he understands something that can’t be taught in a textbook — he lived it.”
Eyes full of tears, Jake hugged his mom tightly after her speech.
A brighter future on the horizon
Anyone battling mental health struggles will hopefully one day be able to have access to the same life-saving care Jake did in a much more efficient way.
Deanna Brant explained DMMHRSB’s dream for a brand-new proposed behavioral health and crisis campus, between Bowtown Road and state Route 521.
The facility would have 24/7 walk-in crisis intervention services and is ideally located for both Delaware and Morrow counties.
“You don’t know where to go? Come on over, and we’ll figure it out. And you may need to go to the ER, we’ll take you there,” Brant said. “But you may not, and if you don’t, this is the place for you.”
The new building would be the home base for adult mobile crisis deployment, Brant said.
“Assessment and stabilization for kids and adults, our region’s crisis hotline and 988 provider would be housed in this building,” she said.
“[This would] centralize care for people who aren’t thinking clearly. There is one place to go for them to access every level of care they could possibly need in the public system,” she said.
While Brant said it is early, and the board is still working out how this would decrease operational costs to providers, she did say site plans are in the works.
“At some point, should all the dominoes fall, we’ll move forward and seek formal support. The largest obstacle, and you all know this, is financing,” Brant said.
