By Erin Beck
Mountain State Spotlight

Earlier this month, West Virginia health officials touted a wide array of services available to residents struggling with mental health challenges.

In honor of May being Mental Health Awareness Month, the agencies noted efforts to help West Virginians with substance use disorder, support children in crisis and offer guidance to anyone who calls the 988 suicide prevention hotline.

But a month earlier, in response to federal cuts under the Trump administration, the state eliminated key parts of a statewide system to prevent suicide.

This round of cuts ended about $800,000 in grants that funded suicide prevention work.

The grants funded at least 12 suicide prevention workers at eight mental health centers and nonprofits across the state, according to state records. Those organizations collaborate through a network known as Prevent Suicide WV. One of those 12 positions was eliminated, 10 staff have diverted to other activities, and one will continue to do suicide prevention work with different funding.

“This is going to be devastating because what’s going to happen is we’re going to lose more people to suicide, to a preventable death,” said Michelle Toman, a volunteer with the network.

West Virginia’s suicide rate is above the national average and has been on the rise. In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, 353 people killed themselves in West Virginia, according to the CDC.

Those employees were carrying out the work of a statewide network focused on helping people at high risk of suicide, many of them with conditions like depression or addiction.

For example, Audra Burrell who worked at the Potomac Highlands Guild’s mental health center, shared her own experience of surviving suicidal feelings at school trainings. She taught students and staff about how to recognize and help kids who are struggling.

Burrell said she was given four days to call the list of people she was working with to tell them she couldn’t help anymore.

“I would have given anything to have someone like me when I was suicidal myself,” she said.

On March 25, Barri Faucett, director of Prevent Suicide WV and an employee of Prestera, one of the mental health centers that lost funding, received an email from state health officials alerting her to the immediate withdrawal of funding to sustain the organization through September.

About a week later, the state Health and Human Services departments issued a press release that assured West Virginians the agencies were “taking proactive steps to ensure the continuation of essential services” in response to “recent cuts at the federal level.”

The state said it would “maintain its efforts in key public health areas,” mentioning infection control for health care workers, disease surveillance and outbreak management in schools and nursing homes, and ongoing epidemiological activities.

“Our commitment to delivering high-quality public health services remains unwavering,” said Arvin Singh, secretary of the state Department of Health.

Alex Mayer, secretary of the Department of Human Services, said: “These funding changes present challenges, but our focus remains on supporting the individuals and families who rely on our services.”

But the state’s press release didn’t mention the cuts to the suicide prevention network. And now, Faucett says the statewide suicide prevention network is in tatters. Only her job and one other position at Prestera were temporarily saved.

“I’ll do everything I can with everything I’ve got,” she said. “I still am just one person.”

Department of Human Services officials said that they would not be asking for additional state funding to keep the suicide prevention network operating.

A spokesperson for Gov. Patrick Morrisey wouldn’t say if he would work to find new funding sources in response to cuts by the Trump administration.

The Trump administration has already slashed funding and fired workers at the federal agency that disperses grants targeted at addiction and mental health assistance, although in an email, a spokesperson said mental health programs will be a “key pillar of the new Administration for a Healthy America,” which she said will begin operations later this year.

So far, the 988 suicide hotline mentioned in the state’s Mental Awareness Month press release is still operational. It’s funded through a different program. But the cuts to the state’s prevention network eliminate services aimed at helping people earlier, before their problems spiral.

The budget cuts and worker layoffs come as the suicide prevention network was beginning to meet with older West Virginians to address an uptick in senior suicides over the last five years.

Vicki Cooper, who did this work at Clarksburg’s West Virginia Prevention Solutions, noted that many seniors, still frightened by the spread of COVID-19, are isolated and lonely.

“A lot of them say, ‘Nobody visits me,’” she said. “‘I don’t have anybody to talk to when I’m feeling this way.’ They’ve kind of just given into the despair of it, and are just like, ‘When I go, I go.’”

If you are in crisis, please contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

Reach reporter Erin Beck at erin@mountainstatespotlight.org