With over 1.1 million people, Collin County is one of the fastest growing and healthiest places to live in the United States. Like the rest of the nation, however, the importance of good behavioral health is just being to be recognized. Behavioral health (mental health and substance abuse/addiction) issues impact all parts of our society: families, friends, colleagues, schools, employers, hospitals, law enforcement, the justice system, first responders and religious organizations.

Individuals who receive timely and appropriate treatment can recover and continue to live productive lives. Those who do not receive care often languish in a debilitating cycle that results in lack of success in schools and employment, loss of friends, homelessness, poor medical care, and even early death. The State of Texas estimates one in five in our adult population and 17% of our youth from 6-17 years old will experience mental illness each year.

Different levels of treatment are necessary for each patient and may include crisis response, outpatient treatment (medications and counseling), inpatient treatment (hospital care), and other support systems.

The success of treatment in behavioral health is heavily influenced by several key variables:

• Stigma associated with a behavioral health diagnosis keeps people away from treatment.
• Insufficient affordable housing and homelessness perpetuates the inability of mentally ill people to properly care for themselves due to chaotic living arrangements.
• The fast growing and changing Collin County population combined with significant adverse trends in mental health conditions are overwhelming current capacity for treating the ill. This results in our jails and prisons becoming the mental institutions of last resort.
• Behavioral health workforce shortages are currently severe and getting worse, which limits treatment options.
• Inadequate state and federal funding for community care continues to trail needs by a wide margin.
• The COVID19 pandemic with lockdowns and isolation orders compounded and accelerated deteriorating pre-COVID trends and brought more patients with higher levels of severity to behavioral healthcare providers of all types, adding significant stress to a healthcare system already struggling with capacity issues.