JOHNSTOWN - Mental health patients in this region of the state have limited access to adequate care, according to Cambria County hospital administrators.
Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown has had a shortage in psychiatrists for years.
In 2015, the hospital suspended all child psychiatry admissions and capped geriatric admissions at 10 patients after two psychiatrists left the area to work elsewhere.
Dr. Greg Thorkelson is the interim medical director for Conemaugh Memorial's Department of Psychiatry. He said the United States has a nationwide shortage as it is, but it is difficult to have doctors come to places like Johnstown or other rural areas in the region, as opposed to bigger cities like Pittsburgh or Philadelphia.
"I believe in Pennsylvania, it's something like 45 percent of psychiatrists are either 65 or older, so many of them are actually close to retirement when there's already a shortage," he said.
He said conditions have improved, as the hospital has used more Tele-Psychiatry, which involved video conferencing between a doctor and a patient. Its digital nature allows physicians to connect to patients from anywhere.
Thorkelson said Tele-psychiatry helps, but does not completely solve the mental health crisis, and the shortage is just one aspect of a larger ripple effect.
"And this creates a big societal problem too. There's a lot of co-curing drug-use, which you see a lot around here (Johnstown), and that is a big, big problem," he said.
He said problems have snowballed since the de-institutionalization in the 1950s, which closed state hospitals all over the country, including many in Pennsylvania
"They went from about 550,000 in-patient beds in the United States to now having around 100,000 so there's been a dramatic decrease along with a dramatic increase in the population in the United States," he said.
Thorkelson said part of the push to close those hospitals was abuse. Many of the patients did not truly need in-patient or constant care, for example thousands of housewives were committed by their husbands for anxiety.
Now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, according to Thorkelson, because many local patients who do need such care often cannot get it.
"So you have people that unfortunately end up in the criminal justice system because they end up incarcerated for behaviors that are psychiatric rather than criminal," he said.
Ginny Poorman said she sees patients coming from Johnstown or Clearfield to a place called Hearts for the Homeless in State College. The shelter helps people in need get back on their feet, and many of the people they help suffer from mental illness or disability.
Poorman said those people come to Centre County desperate for help, and that there has been an influx of them in recent years.
"They end up homeless and it's just really frustrating that we have such a wealthy community and these resources just aren't there," she said.
She said Centre County does have much more to provide, but they also suffer from the same shortages and cannot afford to help people from all over the region.
She said they also often run into legal barriers when connecting people to services who are not Centre County residents, leaving those who have traveled from other counties with nowhere to turn.
In Centre County, Poorman said the process is known as "client dumping."
Thorkelson said all of these factors affecting local patients are difficult to correct because much of it comes down to funding, and until more is available, the ripple effect is expected to continue.
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