Mental health agencies gear up for increased coronavirus-related workload – 13abc Action News

The need for mental health services is increasing by the day as the COVID-19 crisis goes on.

John Sheehan is president of Harbor and Lighthouse Telehealth and says "We're asking the country to do what these diseases thrive off of already which is isolate. And so that's not going to be good for the general population."

To that end, Harbor is preparing to add to it's already sizable staff of mental health professionals who are already up and running on telehealth. "We will find you a therapist, we will find you a case manager and we will find you a psychiatrist or we will find you a nurse practitioner to talk to within 24 hours."

Mike Roehrs is a therapist at another facility that is also increasing it's treatment capacity. Roehrs says the biggest thing people need to know is when to reach out to ask for help. "We all have down days we have to have up days. But if we get stuck in a down day where it's hard to get out bed. Hard to face the day.. Hard to take care of your functional tasks, that's usually the first warning sign."

With such an uncertain future it's normal and expected that many of us will need some extra help. "Nobody's invincible. We all have a breaking point at some point. And there's a lot of wonderful strong people out there. We're not alone in this, we're not alone."

HARBOR BEHAVIORAL 419-475-4449 http://WWW.HARBOR.ORG

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Mental health agencies gear up for increased coronavirus-related workload - 13abc Action News