‘A perfect storm’: McHenry County mental health providers saw uptick in demand through COVID-19 pandemic

Mental health providers in McHenry County and their office receptionists have been fielding more calls than ever as the COVID-19 pandemic wears on more than a year after the county saw its first confirmed case.

Therapist Sara Lemke left a job as an executive for a large behavioral health provider to start Revival Therapy in Crystal Lake in February. The first day she opened, she received 11 phone calls and six new patients.

“That’s uncanny. I didn’t even know how I was going to keep up with answering the phone,” she said

Residents of McHenry County underwent a collective reckoning with their mental health in the past 12 months as COVID-19 caused isolation, unemployment and cancellations of the athletics and cultural events to which many people tie their identities, local experts said.

The pandemic’s toll on the area’s emotional well-being was reflected in concerning trends seen in the county’s 2020 statistics on deaths by suicide and drug overdoses. Big increases in alcohol purchases and consumption, along with more frequent use of other drugs during the public health crisis, are worrying local mental health leaders.

These issues were at least partially driven by the pandemic, the country’s response to it and its rippling effects across society, according to mental health and substance abuse counselors in northern Illinois.

Other factors, combined with the pandemic, induced even more anxiety, depression, fear and frustration, including police killings in the nation captured on widely circulated videos, huge protests for social justice that were both peaceful and sometimes violent, and a divisive election cycle that culminated in an aberrant mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, mental health professionals said.

“The overall social environment and some of the social equity movement certainly added to the overall tension throughout the country over that time frame and definitely had to have had an impact on mental health, along with the pressures and restrictions we’ve seen from COVID-19. Unfortunately, it was a perfect storm,” said Scott Block, the executive director of the McHenry County Mental Health Board.

During the pandemic, about four in 10 adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, up from one in 10 who reported these symptoms from January to June 2019, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report published last month.

Chris Reed, a partner at the addiction treatment provider Northern Illinois Recovery Center, said interest in being admitted to that facility’s programs has increased during the pandemic.

While some blame a rise in mental health issues locally on shutdowns and increased restrictions, many have also had their mental health negatively impacted by the defiance of the rules meant to keep communities safe from COVID-19.

“People, no matter what side of the fence they are on, it creates tension. Whether someone feels the rules are too restrictive or that people aren’t following rules, people are just tense right now,” Lemke said. “The isolation, all these things have definitely created mental health issues perhaps in people that weren’t pre-dispositioned to have them prior or had pretty good coping mechanisms before.”

Turning to controlled substances was a common method to attempt to relieve some of that tension.

In the McHenry County 2021 State of Addiction report released last month, Laura Crain, McHenry County Substance Abuse Coalition’s drug free program coordinator, cited a study by Nielsen IQ of national alcohol markets that said alcohol sales rose more than five-fold in April 2020 compared with the same month a year before.

The increase sustained even after the initial weeks of lockdown, as sales were 180% higher in October 2020 than the same month a year prior, she said.

It wasn’t just alcohol people turned to in order to alleviate stress.

In a survey from June 2020, 13% of U.S. adults reported new or increased substance use because of COVID-19-related stress, and 11% of adults reported thoughts of suicide in the past 30 days, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation report.

Data from early 2020 also shows drug overdose deaths were particularly pronounced from March to May 2020, coinciding with the start of pandemic-related lockdowns, according to the report .

McHenry County also saw more suicides in May than any other month last year, with five out of the 25 total suicide deaths in the county in 2020, according to McHenry County Coroner’s Office data.

While the total of 25 suicide deaths in McHenry County was the lowest since 2015 and down from the 2017 high for the decade at 43, those that died by suicide last year were disproportionately unemployed compared with other years.

Amid stretches of record unemployment rates for the nation last year, about half of those who died by suicide in the county had jobs at the time of death, according to the local coroner’s office.

Aside from 2017, when a similar percentage of those who died by suicide also were employed, last year saw the lowest proportion of employed suicide victims since 2011, when 38% of those who died were employed as the state was still reeling from the Great Recession.

“I think that speaks to the desperation and depression that comes from anxiety related to financial security and a sense of identity people get out of their work,” Block said of the unemployment rates of area suicide victims.

Overdose deaths in McHenry County took a big leap in 2020 to 51 from 37 in 2019, and the average age of last year’s victims of 35.68 years old was by far the youngest since at least 2015, according to McHenry County Coroner’s Office data and the State of Addiction report. The average age of overdose victims ranged between 42.6 and 38.9 in the five years before 2020.

“It’s very concerning,” Crain said of the ages of victims.

It is unclear, however, how the pandemic played a role in younger people fatally overdosing more often last year, she said, and local experts are further researching to explain.

Part of the reason overdose deaths have been more prevalent since 2017 is the introduction of fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid that has been used mix with heroin and other narcotics, into the area’s street drug supply, Crain said.

Fentanyl alone caused at least 10 overdose deaths in McHenry County last year, more than any other drug, and it was among the mix of drugs detected in more than the majority of overdose victims last year, coroner’s data shows.

Fentanyl has also recently been found laced in cocaine and even marijuana in the area, Crain said.

Rob Mutert, the founder of Woodstock’s Warp Corps, an organization that helps prevent young people from falling into substance abuse, suicide and homelessness, said he has heard young people report more temptation to use drugs during the pandemic.

“The heavy has only gotten heavier through COVID-19,” he said.

But experts interviewed for this story are hopeful the collective decline of mental health during the pandemic will serve as an awakening to the need to seek help when it is needed, and believe the stigma associated with being treated for mental health complications is being reduced by the greater awareness of mental health during the COVID-19 crisis.

“We definitely are seeing more people be willing to talk, and I believe that might be in a way not from desperation, but maybe reality,” Mutert said, noting that it is normal to need to speak to others about emotional and mental struggles.

Block said the pandemic has changed how mental well-being is thought about and how open people are in discussing it.

“The stigma when we think of those who are struggling with mental health issues, we think of people with the most acute symptoms. But it is really a generalized impact we’re seeing on everyone right now,” he said. “If anything positive came out of this for the mental health field, it’s that we have seen an increase in awareness and a reduction in stigma. People are feeling more comfortable talking about some of these collective experiences and realizing that they’re not alone.”