About 40% of Westmoreland County residents are living with a mental health diagnosis, while only about half of those who are affected by mental illness receive treatment — in part because of access issues.
Those are among alarming statistics cited in a June 2024 report by county consultant Recovery Innovations.
To help remedy the access problem, the county is partnering with nonprofit Westmoreland Community Action to expand mobile crisis response teams into five communities — beginning with Monday’s grand opening of a site in downtown Derry Borough.
Two-member teams of crisis workers will cover daily shifts at Westmoreland Community Action’s Derry Welcome Center, which opened about six months ago at 108 S. Chestnut St., a former resale shop. They’ll be ready to respond 24/7 in that town or in one of several neighboring communities, if a caller to the county’s crisis hotline needs in-person help.
“We’ve always had a mobile crisis team based out of Greensburg,” said Mandy Zalich, CEO of Westmoreland Community Action. “It slowed down our response time tremendously if we had multiple calls or if the location was far away.
“We respond to in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 mobile calls every month. If (the caller) was in Greensburg and we had a team ready, the response time was five minutes. But, if they were in Burrell School District or one of the other corners of the county, we knew the response time would not be great. We knew that was an area we wanted to improve.”
Up to this point, if a mobile team first gathered at the Westmoreland Community Action headquarters in Hempfield and then headed to a crisis intervention in the Ligonier area, the response time might be as long as an hour, Zalich said.
Now, with a team ready to go at all times in Derry, she said, response might take no more than 15 minutes.
When all of the remote mobile teams are in place, the hope is to have no response time longer than 20 minutes, Zalich said.
“That’s a response time to help save lives,” she said. “At any time throughout the county, we’ll have five teams that are able to respond. That’s what makes a big difference.”
Zalich’s organization is continuing to hire additional mobile crisis workers in four other communities where welcome centers are in development.
A Hempfield site, at 316 Donohoe Road, has a full crisis staff; sites at 212 N. Chestnut St., Scottdale, and 557 Donner Ave., Monessen, are partially staffed.
Zalich said an additional welcome center and mobile crisis site is planned for New Kensington, but a location has yet to be finalized.
The stigma long associated with mental illness is another reason why many who suffer with related conditions don’t get treated.
“There has been so much stigma around behavioral health,” said Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Valerie Arkoosh, who is a medical doctor
“Behavioral health care is just as important as physical health care,” she said at Monday’s Derry opening, adding the former should be just as available as the latter.
“A lot of people are struggling, and you don’t always know it,” Zalich said of mental health issues.
Crisis line callers could range from a teen contemplating suicide to an adult unable to afford medication for a mental health condition.
People needn’t have a mental health diagnosis to find themselves in a crisis situation, said mobile unit manager Samantha Still, who started as a crisis worker with Westmoreland Community Action 13 years ago.
“Since (the covid-19 pandemic), everybody is struggling,” she said. “There’s a lot going on, and people need to have somebody there to listen to them. I think that’s a very big deal, being able to reach out and knowing somebody is there when you need them.”
Kris Detar, director of mental health programs for Westmoreland Community Action, has been with the program for nearly three decades.
In recent years, she said, she’s seen a spike in the prevalence of children who have a behavioral health diagnosis. She said other local crisis cases related to homelessness and drug and alcohol use similarly are “exploding.”
When September arrives, she said, callers may ask for help with children who don’t want to go to school.
“If a child refuses to go to school, there’s always a reason,” Detar said. “We need to find out what that reason is.”
When a caller seeks help with a crisis, she said, “Our No. 1 goal is we want to see that individual and the community be safe.”
Having mobile crisis workers stationed in communities scattered around the county, Zalich said, will allow them to become familiar with local police, emergency workers and other local resources that can be key in connecting callers to the help they need.
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“We look forward to seeing the positive impact this will have,” Derry Mayor Grant Nicely said. “This center will be a vital resource for Derry Borough and surrounding communities as it provides immediate support, safety and access to essential services in times of personal or community crisis, especially in an area where resources are limited.”
As Westmoreland Community Action expands its mental health services into more areas of the county, Zalich said, it also is growing its related staff — from about a dozen to 40 or more. A $750,000 commitment from the county’s federal pandemic relief funding helped start that process, she said.
More than $1 million in additional state funding is helping with the program’s expansion, said Rob Hamilton, Westmoreland County’s director of human services.
Arkoosh said Pennsylvania has drawn upon state and federal dollars to award the county $3 million toward a proposed new emergency behavioral health walk-in stabilization center.
Hamilton said planners have yet to decide on a site or on bed capacity for that center, which is being developed in partnership with UPMC.
He said the center, through either voluntary or involuntary commitment, could provide a place for those who are experiencing a mental health episode and “may be stressed out and not knowing what to do.”
Hamilton said potential patients for the center might be identified with the help of local police and paramedics.
“If they’re out in the community and they find somebody who is identified through our crisis center in Derry, they’ll be able to transport them all the way to our stabilization center,” he said.
He said additional money for the center may be sought through various county funding sources.
“We’re putting our money where our mouth is,” said Sean Kertes, chairman of the county commissioners. “We know that there’s a major (mental health) crisis in our county as well as across the whole country. We’re actually trying to do something instead of just talking about it.”
Hamilton said he doesn’t see the proposed UPMC center as duplicating inpatient behavioral health facilities that Independence Health System is consolidating at Latrobe Hospital. That hospital’s adolescent behavioral health unit is expanding from 11 to 23 beds.
“We don’t ever have to worry about duplication when it comes to crisis beds,” Hamilton said. “In the state, not just in Westmoreland County, we’re not even close to having an adequate number of crisis beds.”