Progress 2021: Uncertainty and access to care continue to fuel mental health challenges

Nearly a year into the global COVID-19 pandemic, Alaskans are feeling the strain the virus has caused on their wallets, community and education. And while those impacts may lessen as a vaccine rolls out, just how the months of uncertainty and stress it brings will impact residents’ ongoing mental and emotional health is yet to be seen, experts said.

What is known, said officials with the Mat-Su Health Foundation, which helps fund local health efforts while advising on policy, is how the virus has dramatically impacted Alaskans’ mental health thus far -- and that combatting that impact must be an ongoing effort.

A survey of 7,000 Alaskans conducted late last year by the Alaska Department of Public Health found that 63% said their emotional health had gotten worse during the pandemic, while 30% said they turned to alcohol or drugs to help them cope with the pandemic. And 39% said it was “very true or somewhat true” that the pandemic has made them worry about the “stability of their living situation,” according to a survey fact sheet.

Yet the pandemic and uncertainty it has created is only exacerbating a long term crisis around mental health and substance abuse while highlighting a shortage in providers trained to address those issues, Health Foundation officials said.

“Our data and research and what the community has told us … is that these challenges are paramount for families in our community. Now we’re compounding those challenges with all the other challenges of the pandemic … it’s an accumulative weight,” said Elizabeth Ripley, chief executive officer of the Mat-Su Health Foundation. “So if you were struggling with a mental health challenge before the pandemic, you're probably still struggling with it.”

But the community lacks the mental health providers needed to address issues. In 2015, for example, a Health Foundation report found that the Mat-Su had 837 residents to every one mental health provider, while the U.S. standard is 300 to one. And while officials have reduced the shortage since then, Ripley said, it’s still a major problem.

“It takes a pandemic to make us realize that the public health infrastructure is really important,” she said. “We had a wake-up call … and we can make those investments in public health, we don't have to wait.”

Ripley said she hopes the telehealth innovations sparked by pandemic-drive office closures continue to be utilized after the crisis is over. Doing so, she said, will result in more users having consistent access to services.

At the United Way of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, headquartered in Palmer, employees and volunteers are seeing first-hand how COVID has impacted local wellness, including mental health, thanks in large part to financial insecurity. Using funding for sources such as the Mat-Su Health Foundation, the United Way is working to increase wellness among those who come to the organization for services.

And while not all of United Way’s work specifically focuses on mental health, all of it ultimately impacts mental health, said Michelle Harmeling, the organization’s outreach coordinator.

“We have without a doubt seen an uptick of things that would indicate that we are in a high stress situation and a sustained high stress situation,” she said. “I would say I get a minimum a day of 10 fairly complex requests.”

While Michelle and the team at United Way coordinate helping with bills or other basic needs and reduce the mental stress caused by uncertainty, they also are working with a variety of other organizations and volunteers to offer hope and help, she said. That includes everything from coordinating extra meals for kids to an effort called Messages of Hope that paints rocks with encouraging messages and places them around the MatSu.

“The bright spot, I think for us and for me in doing the work that we do, iis seeing the creative and innovative and wholly human solutions that have come out of this,” she said.