Mental health professionals are hard to find in Kansas.
Crisis teams that counsel suicidal Wichita residents are struggling to fill night shifts, and psychiatric hospitals that could help people in crisis have empty beds they can’t use because they don’t have enough staff.
States across the country are struggling to hire enough workers for vital mental health tasks. Behavioral health professionals might work with people who are suicidal, help those battling addiction, or provide intensive services to people who need hospitalization to survive a psychotic episode.
One in three Americans live in an area with a shortage of mental health workers, but industry experts fear the situation will get worse if action isn’t taken.
But Kansas health care providers are celebrating a small legislative victory: Gov. Laura Kelly approved a provision in the state budget that will spend about $6 million to train more mental health workers.
The uses of the funds are as follows:
Next year, we plan to hire three new psychiatry residents and recruit 15 new residents across the state.
Four addiction specialty fellowships. These professionals help diagnose, treat, and prevent addiction problems.
A new forensic psychology degree, which will help prepare people who can use science to answer legal questions in court.
6 Psychology Internships.
A variety of programs to increase the number of physician assistants, including new graduate and doctoral programs at Wichita State University.
Funding to increase nurses’ salaries and provide recruiting bonuses: $2.3 million would increase salaries by $7,000 with a recruiting or retention bonus of $2,500.
Demand for psychiatrists is high: Fewer than 15 psychiatrists work at the state’s 26 mental health centers, which are going through a new licensing process that will give them more money if they provide certain services, meaning they need more nurses and case managers.
Some universities have seen enrollment decline in certain majors. At Kansas State University, there are 100 fewer social work majors in 2023 than in 2014, but enrollment in other fields has remained stable or increased.
To further address the issue, health care providers and universities across the state are teaming up to establish the Kansas Behavioral Health Center of Excellence in Wichita, pooling resources to attract more people to these jobs and alleviate the mental health workforce shortage.
More funding alone won’t solve the problem. “More funding will help, but the problem isn’t something that can be easily fixed,” said Alice Weingartner, chief strategy officer at the Community Care Network.
“I wish it was just one thing,” she said. “There are so many reasons.”
Mental health professionals aren’t always well-paid, and some jobs have demanding hours and stressful work. The work attracts people who want to give back to their communities, but poor benefits mean it’s hard to keep them in the field.
Staffing issues existed before the pandemic, but the global virus has made the situation even worse, with many industries, not just mental health, experiencing increased turnover and burnout as a result of the pandemic.
Mel Martin, Community Care’s director of training and development, said the profession should be talking to younger generations about the sector, which could be as simple as going into secondary school classrooms and talking about the job.
“When we think about a career in mental health, we have a model in mind that’s been around for a long time,” Martin says. “You have a 50-minute therapy session with a therapist…[but]current services may look quite different.”
The state has taken some steps to improve this, including new funding in the budget that will help. More reforms are needed, Martin said, and her group is working with the state to push for some reforms.
This is where the Behavioral Health Center of Excellence can help.
“We want to rebuild the Menninger Clinic holistically,” said Kyle Kessler, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community Mental Health Centers.
The Menninger Clinic is an influential mental health center founded in Topeka a little over 100 years ago. Nurses, social workers, psychologists and everyone in between were trained there, and at one time, Kessler said, about a third of the nation’s mental health professionals were associated with Menninger.
The 2003 relocation from Kansas to Texas left a gap in mental health services across the state, a loss Kessler said was “about the same as being in a major car accident going 80 miles per hour.”
He doesn’t want to rebuild a large mental health campus because that would take years, but he wants educators from four-year universities, community colleges and mental health providers to all work together.
The group has just started meeting and will spend the next few months outlining its vision and long-term goals.
