WestChesterBuzz.com

To let West Chester and Liberty Township residents catch up with the news that they need to know, WestChesterBuzz.com will list and link to all of last week’s top local stories every Monday.

WestChesterBuzz.com also recently added a new video page last week. To view West Chester and Liberty Township related videos, visit westchesterbuzz.com/videos.

Alicia Lang loses battle with CF – Alicia Lang, a 2010 Lakota West High School graduate, died from cystic fibrosis Friday, March 8 at the Cleveland Clinic, where she underwent a double-lung transplant on Feb. 11. She would have turned 21 on March 20. The family shared the news early last week.

West Chester hospital to address mental health needs – Millions of Americans experience mental illness each year and there aren’t nearly enough psychiatric beds or funds to combat the region’s growing mental health problem. Beckett Springs Hospital, scheduled to open in July in West Chester, will help address that need, said David Polunas, chief executive officer.

YRC Freight to close West Chester hub – One of the nation’s largest trucking companies is planning to shut down its West Chester hub and distribution center, leaving almost 300 workers in limbo. YRC Freight has informed a local union last week that the company plans to close a significant portion of its local operations as part of a nationwide strategy to consolidate operations, Jason Williams of The Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

Lakota West student wins Overture Award – Lakota West senior Abby Koch (pronounced “cook”) was recently named this year’s Cincinnati Overture Award winner for Visual Arts. WestChesterBuzz shared the senior’s story last week.

Lakota West hires Jan Bennett as its new girls’ soccer coach – The Lakota West Athletic Department recently announced that it has hired Jan Bennett as its new head girls’ soccer coach for its varsity program. Bennett takes over the position that was held by Tara Schafer-Kalkhoff, Lakota West’s first and only head coach for girls soccer. Schafer-Kalkoff announced her retirement in December.

Voice of America Museum Board gets official go ahead – The West Chester Township trustees, once again, agreed to enter a five-year lease with the Board of the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting. This agreement, which was made official last Tuesday night at the latest trustee meeting, will put the museum’s board in charge of maintaining the landmark and will allow them to raise funds as a non-profit corporation.

West Chester neighbors don’t want Kroger – A West Chester Township neighborhood has hired an attorney to prevent a shopping center, which would be anchored by a 133,000-square-foot Kroger Marketplace, from being built near their homes. The group is preparing for its meeting with the Zoning Commission this Monday.

New Enquirer – West Chester and Liberty townships, as well as the rest of Greater Cincinnati, saw a new-looking Cincinnati Enquirer last week. The Enquirer’s new edition unfolded last Monday.

Many crimes kept secret in small Ohio college towns – Sheila McLaughlin continued to report for The Cincinnati Enquirer on how 40 percent of college students in Oxford walk out of courtrooms with a criminal record that is sealed from public sight. Meanwhile, the rest of Butler County lives under different rules.

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Millions of Americans experience mental illness each year and there aren’t nearly enough psychiatric beds or funds to combat the region’s growing mental health problem.

Beckett Springs Hospital, scheduled to open in July in West Chester, will help address that need, said David Polunas, chief executive officer.

The 48-bed, private $10 million facility will more than double the amount of psychiatric beds for adult care in Butler County and become the second privately owned mental health facility in Greater Cincinnati, joining the 48-bed Lindner Center of HOPE in Mason.

“When we looked at the Cincinnati market we saw a tremendous need for inpatient and outpatient mental health services,” Polunas said. “Over the last 20 years there has been a significant decrease in funding for mental health. As opposed to being over-bedded, we don’t have enough beds.”

As the economy crumbled, in 2008, the Ohio Department of Mental Health was forced to trim funding for public hospitals its mental service budget at publicly funded hospitals from $615 million in 2008 to $472 million in 2010.

As part of a $143 million budget cut, the state closed three of its nine hospitals. Now, there are six publicly funded mental health facilities in Ohio. Summit Behavioral Healthcare, 1101 Summit Road in Roselawn, with 291 beds, is the only one left in Southwest Ohio.

“There is a desire for it, but at the same time most states have to balance their budget, the federal government is looking at trying to balance the budget and, unfortunately, mental health and human services in general end up being an easy place to cut,” Polunas said.

Nationally, across all publicly funded state hospitals, state governments have collectively cut $4 billion from its mental health budget in the past four years. Furthermore, it has lost between 8 percent and 9 percent of its beds, according to the National Association of State and Mental Health Program Directors Research Institute.

With a need of mental health services, private hospitals like Beckett Springs and the Lindner Center of HOPE, which opened in 2008, are trying to serve an under-served population.

“It is really hard to be negative about having more opportunities for mental care in our community,” said John M. Hawkins, chief of psychiatry at the Lindner Center of HOPE. “Back in the mid-’90s our region went through a very significant decrease, approximately a 50 percent decrease, in the number of inpatient psychiatric beds.”

As of March 2012, in Butler, Warren, Clermont and Hamilton counties, there were a total of 465 beds for adult inpatient mental service care at private hospitals for a population of 2,244,869.

“Any professional in the mental health field will tell you that there are huge gaps in service,” said Liz Atwell, executive director of Mental Health America of Southwest Ohio. “The overarching issue for the last couple of decades that there is a significant need and not enough resources available.”

Beckett Springs will provide free mental health and addiction assessments inpatient treatment for psychiatric disorders and acute emotional conditions. Aftercare and weekly group therapy also will be offered.

It will employ 87 when it opens in July and projects a staff of 150 a year from now.

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Tags: Tags: Beckett Springs Hospital, Beckett Springs Hospital West Chester, CEO David Polunas Beckett Springs Hospital, David Polunas, Lindner Center of HOPE, Lindner Center of HOPE Mason