The recovery community has built a sturdy foundation throughout the state, and a western Kansas mental health facility is seeing that addressing both mental health and addiction simultaneously in young people can help prevent future battles. Compass Behavioral Health in Dodge City is utilizing its employees to help people start their journey. “There was an opening for a peer support specialist, so I was like, you know, I’m going to get into that field and give back to people,” Seth McGinnes, a peer support specialist, said. The facility provides support for mental health and addiction and aims to give young people a jump start on knowing their minds and body. “If I could get people to realize the signs of kids that are struggling in the earlier ages, they would not go to hospitals, and they would not get in trouble with the law, and they would not have addiction problems if we could get them in early,” Richard Falcon, program manager at Compass, said. Compass Behavorial Health also has transitional housing, which connects people with local providers or therapists before they need to be fully admitted to a hospital. Officials say that, typically, people stay between 24 and 72 hours, but every case is different.
Source: KSN-TV
