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Westbrook Health Services adapts to pandemic

Does not feel ‘significant change’ in staffing

By Evan Bevins 4 min read

PARKERSBURG -- As a mental health care provider, Westbrook Health Services remains operational during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But that doesn't mean it's business as usual.

Westbrook provides psychiatric care, therapy, substance abuse treatment and assistance for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in seven counties in the Mid-Ohio Valley. Across its eight locations, the average, pre-pandemic door count was 1,300 people a week.

"Now, we are only seeing 300 a week," said Amanda Reeder, public relations/marketing coordinator for Westbrook.

While support groups, classes for those working to get their license back after a DUI conviction and the day program for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities have been suspended due to social-distancing guidelines, other services have moved to a telehealth model.

"Luckily, this wasn't too drastic or difficult for us because we already had telehealth capabilities and had been utilizing them for over a year now," Reeder said. "It's still been a very large jump in our network expansion."

Westbrook employs about 430 people and hasn't seen a significant change in that number since the pandemic took hold, Reeder said.

"It looks like we have less people, but it's just because many are working from home rather than in the office," she said.

Among them is licensed professional counselor Kelli Nay, who has been conducting one-on-one therapy sessions from her Marietta, Ohio, home via phone and the Internet.

As social-distancing recommendations and orders to avoid gatherings came down, everything "felt very surreal," Nay said. No one was sure what the best practices would be to maintain contact and appointments with clients.

"To know that we could still help them but not put them or ourselves in danger" was a relief, she said.

Nay communicates with some clients by video on their smartphones, tablets or computers, "but a lot of people prefer the old-fashioned telephone," she said.

Those still in Westbrook's offices follow strict guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure both clients' safety and their own, Reeder said. Some are working evenings and weekends to reduce the number of people in a facility at a given time.

Care continues for clients with intellectual and developmental disabilities in group homes, Reeder said. In fact, Westbrook is looking to hire direct care staff to work with clients that fall into such categories, including preparing meals, handling laundry and performing other tasks for those unable to care for themselves.

A lot of advice in recent weeks has focused on physical symptoms of possible virus infection, but Reeder said it's important to monitor mental health as well.

The unprecedented shutdown of so many aspects of daily life could "trigger an onset of mental health issues or just exacerbate existing ones," she said.

"Isolation is hard for anyone to deal with and the uncertainty of everything is something that could make even the calmest individual feel a little uneasy," she said. "We are taking extra measures to reach out to clients and find ways that work with them and with this shutdown so that we can keep everyone safe and healthy right now."

The ongoing situation has been a topic in many of Nay's therapy sessions -- mainly the effects of isolation and missing family events and other forms of interaction.

"I was really quite surprised that more people weren't concerned with the virus," she said. "It's more the collateral damage that we're focusing on, more so than the big event itself."

That said, Reeder noted that mental health professionals may be dealing with the fallout from those recent events even after many aspects of life return to normal.

"I think we will see a big impact from this in the future with possibly lasting effects years down the line," Reeder said.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.

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