Weighing in on mental health, substance use

Mercy Hospital to host webinar on Saturday

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Several experts on mental health, substance abuse and addiction spoke to the Herald last week about the pandemic’s impacts on these issues, ahead of a webinar this Saturday that will be hosted by Friends of Mercy, a not-for-profit organization that fundraises for Catholic Health's Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre.

The webinar, titled “Covid-19: The Hidden Impact on Mental Health, Substance Abuse and Addiction,” is scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon. It is

Steven Dodge, founder and chief executive officer of the SLATE Project — Saving Lives from Addition through Treatment and Education — which provides addiction education and support, spoke about the difficulty people have recovering from addiction when they can’t meet in person for 12-step programs. “I saw a lot of different people try to do the Zoom meetings and gave it their best shot, but didn’t see success in it,” Dodge said. “So that was difficult to watch.”

Dodge noted that for those struggling with addiction, drugs are used as a temporary solution to problems in their lives. And with so many people losing their jobs amid the pandemic, anxiety is high. “When you’re going through it like that, where you lose a job or you’re having trouble financially,” he said, “there’s a lot more fuel to the fire for yourself to fall into depression or negative attitudes that will lead you to picking up again.”

“One of the key elements of why self-help and these kinds of presentations are so important is that we’re trying to build community,” said Dr. David Flomenhaft, who oversees the Outpatient Behavioral Health Clinic in Garden City. He added that after a period of more than a year now of isolating to preserve our health and others’, people miss being around one another.

The pandemic, Flomenhaft said, has given us so many negative things to think about constantly that it is affecting both our physical and mental health. “We spent a lot more time sleeping, sitting and taking in media,” he said, “and that inactivity has worsened negative thought processes.”

With better weather and more widely available vaccinations, however, people can be more active and be around one another again. “We’re social creatures,” he said. “We need community.”

Flomenhaft said there had been a 30 percent increase in the use of telehealth services from 2019 to 2020, which has brought help from afar directly to patients. Not being in the room with your care provider, however, complicates the usual process of recovery from addiction or a mental health problem.

“The pandemic changed the landscape of health care,” Flomenhaft said.

Anthony Rizzuto, founder and executive director of Families in Support of Treatment, said the country has seen increases in suicide attempts, domestic violence, child abuse and marital discord during the pandemic, at the same time that hospital beds became scarce for those seeking help with mental illness. Without the ability to take people in who are suffering from addiction, Rizzuto said, it is extremely difficult to meet the need and to help those people overcome their challenges.

Zoom has been a great tool to fill some of that need, but Rizzuto acknowledged that it is far from a perfect replacement for in-person meetings. “There’s a lot that is said in a group in non-verbal communication that I can’t pick up in a Zoom meeting,” he said.

Nonetheless, he said, if there had been no remote options over the course of the past year, things could have been much worse for people in recovery.

To register for Saturday’s conversation, residents can email Gloria.Disciullo@chsli.org or call 516-705-2618.