Since the advent of COVID-19, mental health providers have seen an increase in anxiety and depression across the board.
Dr. Stephanie Moses, the creator and director of a mental health fellowship for mental health clinicians and primary care, said there has been a lot of attention on school age children.
“So we definitely know there’s been a significant impact there, and also … in the geriatric population, but my guess is it’s across the board. It’s hitting young adults, middle-aged adults. I think it’s just so widespread,” Moses said.
She added that this is the after-effect of COVID.
“At the very beginning, there was a lot of anxiety and fear but it kind of felt particularly in our nation that people were pulling together and trying to be supportive. Then just a lot of other social stressors and tensions happened and so now we’re definitely seeing the impact of the pandemic,” Moses said.
Most patients are experiencing depression and anxiety. The most common thread in the Permian Basin, though, even pre-pandemic is finances because of the ups and downs of the oilfield.
“That’s definitely still a thing since oil … just dropped within the last week or two, so people are stressed …,” Moses said in a Dec. 20 interview. “But then also … once you hit September/October, generally speaking, going into the … holiday season people start to feel either an onset of their symptoms, or symptoms get worse because the holiday time tends to be extremely stressful for a significant amount of people,” Moses said.
“Right now, we’re hearing about family and stress of family during the holidays. But ultimately, finances remain a consistent stressor for a lot of people.”
Another stressor is healthcare with the triple-demic of COVID, RSV and flu.
“People and parents are very concerned about that. Those are probably the most major themes,” she said.
She added that it’s important to know that it’s OK not to be OK sometimes and you don’t have to power through everything.
You don’t have to suffer in silence, she said. Tell someone like a trusted friend or doctor what’s going on and if you’re not feeling well. If your symptoms last longer than seven to 10 days, they’re not improving and it’s disrupting your daily life, it’s time to go to a doctor and get checked out.
She added that it’s important to unplug from the news and social media and do things that bring you peace and joy even if it’s just for 15 minutes a day to allow yourself to decompress.
“Right now during the holiday season one of the most troubling things for a lot of people is being social, but also being social around trusted loved ones is one of the biggest protectors against an onset of depression, too. So it can start to eliminate that risk if you’re able to be social and you have people in your life that you do trust and enjoy their company,” Moses said.
“It’s also very, very important right now to watch your intake of substance … A lot of people will increase their alcohol intake during the holidays because all of the holidays festivities. Alcohol is a depressant, so that can impact mood and … for a lot of people (it) creates more anxiety. It has what we call this kind of kickback, or rebound effect, where it will increase your anxiety.”
Sleep is also extremely important.
“Getting a significant and a proper amount of sleep at this time, staying hydrated — the normal things that our body needs to function optimally — like our diet and our sleep and water intake are the things that tend to dissipate quite a bit during the holidays. So I think keeping those things in mind and doing those simple things can really do a lot to help people manage more stress that’s going on, whether it’s holiday related, pandemic related; whatever it might be,” she added.
For probably the last seven to 10 years, there’s been a shortage of mental health providers nationwide.
“But our area is extremely underserved and part of that is it’s not just Midland and Odessa, but we also serve so many surrounding rural communities. Since there are not clinicians in those areas, those people are relying on the providers in Midland and Odessa for services so it’s just a drastic shortage in our area,” Moses said.
Typical wait times to get into therapy could be anywhere from eight to 12 weeks. Sometimes it’s longer for therapy and it’s up to six months for psychiatric services for medication.
“It’s a dire situation and one of the reasons I created the fellowship program … was to try to help have more in the workforce. Really the initiative for West Texas is for us to grow our own. We wanted to find … local learners that wanted to go into mental health and really be able to educate them to provide quality services once they’re licensed. That’s the initiative. Those things take time,” Moses said.
“You have to hit them as undergraduates and then to go through the full process from undergraduate to licensed professional can be a minimum of six years. Then depending on what type of degree you’re getting, it can be up to 10 years,” she added.
On the bright side, Moses said her program is having success recruiting prospective psychologists and licensed professional counselors.
“It’s not as dire as you might imagine. For example, University of Texas Permian Basin has an undergraduate psychology program which has almost 1,000 learners currently enrolled and they have a master’s of psychology program, as well. So we have resources that could be coming through the pipeline,” Moses said.
She added that Sul Ross State University in Alpine has an master’s in psychology program, as does West Texas A&M University.
“There are programs here. It’s just really putting a lot of emphasis and focus on recruiting those learners to actually come into the mental health field. A lot of times people don’t know what the work really is like and what it will be like. I think if we do our job and educating the learners coming through that have some interest in psychology, or in medicine and what the work looks like I think we’ll find that more people will be attracted to it,” Moses added.
The grow our own project started about three years ago as she started to recruit people into the fellowship.
“We really focus on recruiting from UTPB and Texas Tech and then obviously West Texas A&M and San Angelo State … We’ve been successful in recruiting from those programs and Texas Tech Health Sciences Center also has an online master’s of psychology program that we’ve been successfully recruiting from as well. The numbers are low, but it’s people coming through the pipeline. I think once we have a steady stream, then we can increase the number of people,” Moses said.
Most providers in this area, she said, are licensed professional counselors, which is a masters level degree in psychology.
“You can be licensed with a master’s level and you can practice independently as a licensed professional counselor,” she said.
Moses’ main interest is women’s health, postpartum and mental health among people of color. She has been with Texas Tech health sciences for almost 15 years.
She was in the Odessa office practicing in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, which is primary care.
“I just recently stopped my clinical practice. I created and I’m the director of a mental health fellowship for mental health clinicians and primary care, so now I’m mostly the administrator over that. I stopped practicing i believe in August, meaning just having my own active clientele, so now I just teach the fellows,” Moses said.
“I’m also the clinical programming consultant for the Permian Basin behavioral health hospital. We’re doing everything for that, just getting it all set up, meeting with the architects so I’m heavily involved in the design of the building, the services that the inpatient unit and the medical office building will be providing. I’ve been doing that since about the middle of September, so that’s been very fun.”
