- 1
- 2
- next
- | single page
David Clifton has played the waiting game, desperate for medications that would ease the effects of the bipolar disorder he's struggled with for years.
He grows anxious and nervous. Adding to his distress, entire months pass before he can see a psychiatrist to prescribe the pills.
As he sits on his front stoop in South Bend, the 45-year-old says he becomes so frazzled that "I don't like coming out of my house."
It's part of the disability that keeps him from work. Memories of hard times come back, he says, "and I just get stuck there."
Clifton has to wait so painfully long because Oaklawn, a Goshen-based mental health agency, has been struggling with a shortage of psychiatrists.
Psychiatrists are doctors who specialize in mental health issues and prescribing psychotropic drugs. Plenty of local psychiatrists can be found in private practice, but few accept Medicaid, say mental health professionals. It pays less.
Oaklawn accepts Medicaid because it's designated by the state as the
community mental health center for St. Joseph County.
Clifton waited months for a psychiatrist last year at Oaklawn. But things kept cropping up and he missed appointments. He finally saw an Oaklawn doctor in February, coming home with pill samples that helped somewhat -- until they ran out. Then, he said, that doctor quit, and he waited until May, when he had to call off an appointment because his ailing mother called on his help. He finally made it to an appointment a week later where he said he met with a "planner," not a doctor, who told him he'd hear back in a couple of weeks about what will happen next. Oaklawn is trying to help him secure Medicaid since he has no insurance. He still doesn't have medications.
Oaklawn started with a deficit of psychiatrists when it assumed all of the outpatient care from the former Madison Center in 2010. A handful of psychiatrists had just left Madison Center that year in the midst of its financial collapse.
Since then, Oaklawn CEO Laurie Nafziger said her staff has been working hard to recruit psychiatrists for its new turf in St. Joseph County.
"There is hope on the horizon," she said.
Two new full-time psychiatrists will join Oaklawn's staff this summer. Three had accepted the job offers, but one dropped out; Nafziger suspects it was because of counteroffers from an employer in Indianapolis.
The national shortage of psychiatrists, Nafziger said, breeds such a keen demand for doctors that it's hard for a midsized city like South Bend to compete.
"I can't afford to pay what a general hospital can pay," she said.
Fewer medical students are entering the profession. From 2000 to 2008, the number of psychiatry training programs across the country dropped from 186 to 181, and the number of graduates fell from 1,142 to 985, according to a 2011 article in Academic Psychiatry.
Nafziger describes a stigma that still lingers over psychiatry -- at least among medical students who think, "Why not be a real doctor?"
'The need feels huge'
Meanwhile, there are gaps to patch.
He grows anxious and nervous. Adding to his distress, entire months pass before he can see a psychiatrist to prescribe the pills.
As he sits on his front stoop in South Bend, the 45-year-old says he becomes so frazzled that "I don't like coming out of my house."
It's part of the disability that keeps him from work. Memories of hard times come back, he says, "and I just get stuck there."
Clifton has to wait so painfully long because Oaklawn, a Goshen-based mental health agency, has been struggling with a shortage of psychiatrists.
Psychiatrists are doctors who specialize in mental health issues and prescribing psychotropic drugs. Plenty of local psychiatrists can be found in private practice, but few accept Medicaid, say mental health professionals. It pays less.
Oaklawn accepts Medicaid because it's designated by the state as the
community mental health center for St. Joseph County.
Clifton waited months for a psychiatrist last year at Oaklawn. But things kept cropping up and he missed appointments. He finally saw an Oaklawn doctor in February, coming home with pill samples that helped somewhat -- until they ran out. Then, he said, that doctor quit, and he waited until May, when he had to call off an appointment because his ailing mother called on his help. He finally made it to an appointment a week later where he said he met with a "planner," not a doctor, who told him he'd hear back in a couple of weeks about what will happen next. Oaklawn is trying to help him secure Medicaid since he has no insurance. He still doesn't have medications.
Oaklawn started with a deficit of psychiatrists when it assumed all of the outpatient care from the former Madison Center in 2010. A handful of psychiatrists had just left Madison Center that year in the midst of its financial collapse.
Since then, Oaklawn CEO Laurie Nafziger said her staff has been working hard to recruit psychiatrists for its new turf in St. Joseph County.
"There is hope on the horizon," she said.
Two new full-time psychiatrists will join Oaklawn's staff this summer. Three had accepted the job offers, but one dropped out; Nafziger suspects it was because of counteroffers from an employer in Indianapolis.
The national shortage of psychiatrists, Nafziger said, breeds such a keen demand for doctors that it's hard for a midsized city like South Bend to compete.
"I can't afford to pay what a general hospital can pay," she said.
Fewer medical students are entering the profession. From 2000 to 2008, the number of psychiatry training programs across the country dropped from 186 to 181, and the number of graduates fell from 1,142 to 985, according to a 2011 article in Academic Psychiatry.
Nafziger describes a stigma that still lingers over psychiatry -- at least among medical students who think, "Why not be a real doctor?"
'The need feels huge'
Meanwhile, there are gaps to patch.
