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"What transpires three months from now in relation to mental health following the Georgia high school shooting?"
Help is accessible if you or someone you're acquainted with is grappling with suicidal thoughts or mental health concerns. In the USA: Reach out to or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Hotline. Internationally: The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide have global crisis center contact details.
An additional patient showing similar symptoms arrived at another local facility, as per a health system spokesperson's statement.
The day following the September 4th school shooting, which claimed the lives of two students and two teachers, roughly 80 families visited a county office to obtain counseling from volunteer therapists hailing from across the Atlanta metro area, as reported by one healthcare provider. The following Sunday, nine people received free treatment at a local church for PTSD, courtesy of volunteering Atlanta-area providers. On Monday, the state launched a temporary recovery center to help residents locate counseling, religious support, or additional aid. The demand continues to be substantial.
“We’re still figuring things out,” stated Amanda McKee, whose son, Asa Deslonde, is a senior at Apalachee, two days after the tragic event. “It’s second by second. It’s minute by minute. The past couple of days have been unfathomable.”
Mass shootings frequently inflict invisible injuries on survivors, leading to life-altering symptoms that sometimes leave them temporarily or even permanently incapacitated. However, it often takes time for such symptoms to manifest. Post-shooting, panic attacks and anxiety levels tend to surge across a community and reach their peak when individuals revisit the scene, according to Howard Liu, chair of the Council on Communications for the American Psychiatric Association.
Healthcare providers remain apprehensive that in the upcoming days, months, and years, the community may struggle to secure assistance for their mental health needs. Barrow County, located along a highway connecting Atlanta to the college town of Athens, is experiencing a gradual transition from agriculture to development.
Before the shooting, the area had a single inpatient mental health facility based in Gainesville, approximately 30 miles away from the site of the Barrow County shooting, which was "constantly overwhelmed," as mentioned by Sean Couch, a spokesperson for Northeast Georgia Health System. The latest federal data indicates that Barrow County needs to add at least 13 full-time practitioners to no longer be categorized as a mental health workforce shortage area.
“We applied a temporary fix to a chronic issue, and that Band-Aid won’t last,” said Roland Behm, a co-founder of the Georgia Mental Health Policy Partnership, an advocacy group representing mental health organizations in the state. “What happens three months from now?”
Barrow County's scarcity of mental health providers mirror those of the state as a whole. Georgia ranks nearly last among states in terms of mental health care resources availability, according to Mental Health America, a nonprofit advocating for increased mental health funding. More than 5 million Georgians reside in mental health professional shortage areas like Barrow County.
Securing mental health care to address such trauma is an ongoing challenge across the country. However, Georgia is one of the 10 states that haven't fully extended Medicaid eligibility, the nation's safety net insurance for individuals with low incomes and also the primary payer for mental health services. Georgia's uninsured rate is 13.6%, which is 4.1 percentage points higher than the national average, according to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Even people with private health policies often struggle to find affordable, in-network mental health care due to the lack of providers willing to work with low insurance reimbursement rates, as pointed out by Behm.
Tamara Conlin, CEO of Advantage Behavioral Health Systems, noted that attendees at the initial counseling sessions arranged by her organization showed a deep sense of sadness and anxiety.
“They’re still in shock and attempting to process what happened,” she said.
Prior to the shooting, students at Apalachee High School had reported widespread mental health concerns.
Close to 200 of 1,725 student respondents reported they had seriously contemplated suicide at least once in the previous year, according to the latest Georgia Student Health Survey: difficulties with peers, friends, or family emerged as the primary motivators. About half of the students from the school who participated in the survey claimed to feel sad, depressed, or withdrawn at least once within the past 30 days.
Residents of the county had long complained about having to travel for psychiatric treatment and reckoned that the "shortage of psychologists and counseling services resulted in untreated high anxiety and depression rates" during a 2019 focus group addressing health care access.
The lack of mental health services remained a top priority for the region during a follow-up assessment in 2022. That year, Barrow County recorded one of the highest opioid overdose death rates in Georgia, according to state data, and its five-year suicide rate was higher than the state average.
Following the school shooting, the Barrow County School System acquired a $1.8 million federal grant to enhance mental health resources in schools, from 2023 to 2028.
However, immediately following the shooting, mental health providers across the region still scrambled to provide free resources for area residents. Three volunteers aided last Wednesday's response at Northeast Georgia Medical Center Barrow. Advantage Behavioral Health Systems kept its Barrow clinic open on Sunday and provided counselors for local community events and schools as they resumed operations.
William Smith, who leads the Atlanta Center for EMDR, is arranging sessions to address PTSD using eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, starting with first responders and eventually involving local residents.
Over the weekend, The Lutheran Church's Comfort Dog Unit brought nine loving golden retrievers to offer solace to those grappling with grief. This team of canines has been dispatched in response to previous tragedies, such as the Uvalde, Texas, tragedy.
Volunteer Paul Soost expressed, as people congregated around a campus flagpole where they left flowers and messages, "We can't mend what they're feeling, but we can offer comfort."
Healthcare professionals anticipate that the community's needs will escalate as students resume attending Apalachee High School and as the nation's focus shifts from the shooting.
Conlin, from Advantage Behavioral Health Systems, explained, "That's when people start facing the trauma." She likened the current situation to the increased patient load she encountered after the immediate threat of the covid-19 pandemic subsided.
Her clinic in Barrow County already served around 750 active clients before the shooting, 120 of whom were under 18.
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Mckee, Asa's mother, shared that her son's healing journey will be a lengthy one. One of his football coaches, Rich Aspinwall, was among the four lives lost. A pivotal moment came the day following the shooting, she said, when the school's head football coach gathered the team to express his own pain.
"The coach acknowledged their pain, validated it, and urged them to accept their injuries," Mckee said. "These aren't the physical wounds inflicted by the senseless act, but they are injuries nonetheless."
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The temporary recovery center launched by the state aims to help residents locate counseling, religious support, or additional aid, acknowledging the ongoing need for mental health assistance in the community. After the shooting, many residents in Barrow County are struggling with mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety, which can often lead to life-altering symptoms and temporary or permanent incapacitation.
