Dear local and state candidates:
On Sept. 10, The Garden Island produced an article that discussed an “epidemic” that was developing on our island in regards to spiking suicide rates. According to the article, statistics illustrated a dramatic increase of Kauai resident suicides, which had doubled within just one year in comparison to the annual suicide average of prior years.
Most recently, this article’s message feels even more relevant. Within the past two months, I’ve witnessed a multitude of different communities impacted by the outcome of victims suffering from mental health who’ve lost the hope for relief, stability and the future.
As a result, they’ve taken their lives. Being a social worker, mental/behavioral health practitioner, and local community member I feel devastated and depleted. I am not the only one.
I was asked, “Why does this keep happening?” As we reflect on our island’s personalized epidemic, it appears as though no visible progress has been made since it first surfaced last year.
By simply completing a general online search of “suicide statistics,” it identifies a clear link between mental illness and suicide. It also acknowledges that individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts should be seen by trained mental health professionals.
The Garden Island article stated, “Clearly, many Kauai residents suffer from severe depression and there are not enough treatment resources to reach all. … Police are frustrated by the situation, but the department realizes that mental health resources are in desperately short supply on Kauai and the treatment community is doing the best it can.”
With no practical solutions that follow these statements, this is no longer a sufficient response for the people of Kauai. As a licensed social worker who assists one of Kauai’s most vulnerable populations, it is apparent that there are inadequate mental and behavioral health services for our island’s residents.
Although publicly addressed a year ago, Kauai still is in desperate need of mental health services but ironically has been losing these services. A primary state funded mental health agencies on island that works directly with our judicial system, private/public health care offices, and community-based organizations, is currently in the process of discharging over 200 clients/patients who met the Adult Mental Health Division eligibility criteria.
These clients are now losing services that include psychiatric treatment/medication management, case management, psychosocial rehabilitation, housing assistance, and more. These clients being unloaded are our community’s cooks, fishermen, teachers, performers, friends, makua, kupuna and keiki. These are the ones most vulnerable to suicide, and they are now losing the scarce services our island has for them.
So while there is an acknowledgment of mental health services severely needed and an ongoing suicide epidemic within our community, services are being cut even more. Why is there not more funding being allocated for appropriate mental/behavioral health services and qualified professionals especially during such a crisis?
Just because services are being dropped by local state agencies, doesn’t mean our mental health population has gotten smaller or healthier. It means intensified severity of unmet mental health needs for folks we love and know. So then what are we supposed to do as a community?
An emphasis on community suicide awareness has been emphasized, yet it is an unbalanced response to such an epidemic. Is this truly the answer — to take away formal services and teach our communities how to be more aware? As a mental/behavioral health practitioner and community member, that responsibility feels like a defeating expectation. Indeed, we are a proactive and interconnected island that takes care of each other.
We do this with love and compassion. However, as a solution for our suffering loved ones who need formal services it is politically, socially and ethically inappropriate. According to these means, we limit the tangible resources that mental/behavioral health professionals are able to provide for the mental health population and subsequently substitute it by providing the community with the tools.
Candidates who will represent our/your communities, what will you do with the authority and elected voice we give you? What will you do to see, feel, and meet the needs of not only our members who suffer from mental illness and suicidality, but also all of us suffering from loss of loved ones who’ve passed on due to unmet mental health needs? Can you feel our pain? Our desperate need for qualified professionals, especially psychiatrists, social workers, clinicians and behavioral therapists?
We no longer accept the revolving door of traveling psychiatrists that read a chart, make a prescription, work on their tan, and then move on and out. We are a community that is not getting our needs met! So please, SHOW us! How will you dedicate your time to battle our communal and systemic issues of suicide, lack of available services for our mental health population, and better cultural support for our grieving Kauai residents. If you’re ever stuck on implementable solutions, there’s a few of us with some ideas.
Mahalo for your commitment to Kauai’s communities that support you and also look to you with our systemic and communal needs.
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Franci Dávila, MSW, LSW, is a resident of Kapaa.
The despair that precedes suicide is an important challenge facing Kauai. The economic current is so strong that many of our people cannot stay housed with or without mental illness. Yes, funded mental health care needs to continue. Safe Zone sleeping areas need to be created in the different regions and separately for people with differing needs to address the crisis of houselessness. Many people cannot find a home because they have young children. This would be a separate safe zone than for those primarily coping with mental illness. A goal within staying in these locations is a better long-term plan. Suicide and despair is not limited to being without housing, but it dramatically amplifies every problem that exists to be essentially breaking the law when you lay down at night to sleep “somewhere” where you are not welcome. People begin to recover from profound despair when there is a pathway to which their lives have a sense of purpose. There is value in helpful non-profits, but more value in creating an environment where people with less-than-full capacity can still contribute to the community around them. Inspiring and empowering people with opportunities to truly make a difference is possible. It doesn’t need to be about the money. As a Kauai council candidate and a community advocate for decades, I have a strong eye on the many layers that create social imbalance on our island. Mahalo for asking this important question.
Felicia Cowden
http://www.feliciacowden.com
This was a much needed article. I thank the writer and the garden island for having the courage and foresight in publicizing this much needed discussion. May I add, that there is a ripple effect from not having the basic fundamental need of housing. It ripples into every aspect in a society. Without affordable housing, we lose medical professionals, teachers and dedicated and caring social agency professionals. When families are homeless, houseless, separated and displaced, you lose purpose because you feel uncared for, abandoned and ostracized by your commuting and local and state government. When you have homeless county and state workers, what does this say to the thousands of homeless families, children, the elderly, the vets and the mentally compromised? Without purpose one suffers depression and consequentially, entertains suicidal ideation. As a community, we must take action and come together to house our local homeless community FIRST. Then, we can institute the changes we the community know our people need to become whole again and become emotionally, mentally and spiritually healthy and alive. We the people are not living, nor thriving. We are forced by a debt based economy into surviving, and there is nothing happy and purposeful in that whatsoever. I encourage members of our community to keep on submitting truth and having truth be told and publicized through our local paper and other sources of public media. I thank you so much for your time and valor to write and submit your article. And I thank the Garden Island in publishing such an important yet unspoken tragedy of suicide. Finally.