Big changes coming to mental healthcare in Evansville

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) - The future of mental healthcare in Indiana is beginning to take shape.

Southwestern Behavioral Health Care believes they’ll be on the front lines of that change.

“It really is incredible the amount of support for mental health over the past several years,” said President and CEO of Southwestern Behavioral Healthcare, Katy Adams.

On Friday, Adams stood alongside U.S. Representative Larry Bucshon to announce Southwestern is one of eight mental health centers in the state to become a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic, or CCBHC.

“I know that the resources historically have been scarce,” Bucshon said. “But they’re improving.”

Those improvements come in the form of funding flowing through Medicaid. And while that funding is just beginning, Southwestern has been using grant money to prepare for the change.

That allowed them to expand their services, and increase training, access and their workforce.

“This past year we assisted 6,400 calls and our mobile crisis team has 1,105 crisis events that they responded to in our community just this last year,” Adams said.

That’s a 252% increase from the year before. Southwestern has also cut down on wait times. Where people in mental health crisis used to have to wait months to see a therapist, that wait time is now just 12 days.

“The idea is we don’t want people in jail, we don’t want people in homeless shelters, we don’t want people in the hospital, we don’t want people waiting six hours in the emergency room,” Adams said. “We want to meet people where they are in that moment and provide exactly what they need when they need it.”

This model is where mental health resources are heading in Indiana. Adams says one day every community mental health center in the state will be a CCBHC.

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