The fact that we have a mental health treatment capacity shortage in rural areas should come as no shock to anyone.

Those in the health care industry have been talking about the lack of capacity for years. State and federal officials have heard the stories. And while we understand that it takes time to rebuild the mental health care infrastructure after it has been intentionally dismantled in well-meaning but ultimately fruitless efforts over the course of decades, work to increase mental health care capacity cannot continue at the current snail’s pace.

We don’t all think about the shortage of mental health care beds every day. Emelia Harley, vice president of care services at UPMC Chautauqua, does. She deals with the current system – if it can be called a system – every day. During Congressman Nick Langworthy’s recent tour of the hospital Harley shared a story of a child in the hospital’s emergency room who has been there for eight weeks because of mental health issues.

“We can’t get him placed anywhere,” she said.

Last August, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office examined the shortage of practitioners in rural areas. The study didn’t include Chautauqua County, but we have no reason to doubt the numbers in the other rural counties are much different than ours. The rural counties’ mental health practitioner to 10,000 population ratio (6.9) is less than half that of the state (16.1). All of the rural counties are designated as mental health HP Shortage Areas either for the entire population, or for portions of the population like the low income or Medicaid eligible portions of the population. In the rural counties, there are 305,265 people within mental health HP Shortage Areas who are designated as underserved by the Health Resources Services Administration, or nearly 41% of the population.

Consider this our annual reminder that rural areas need the state and federal governments’ help to treat the mental health crisis that health care officials see every day. Not only are we struggling to add treatment capacity for those struggling with substance abuse issues, but we are allowing those with serious enough mental health issues to require medical care to languish in a hospital emergency room because there is nowhere else to go.

That is unacceptable by any measure. Not only is the child Harley referenced not receiving the type of specialized care needed, but cases like this one also mean limited emergency room beds in UPMC Chautauqua and hospitals like it aren’t available when someone else needs it. It’s one reason why those who need emergency treatment sometimes see the emergency room overflowing with people in need of care – there’s nowhere for some patients to go when what they really need is mental health treatment.

We shouldn’t expect the shortage of mental health treatment capacity to be solver overnight. But signs of progress would be a welcome change.