More people seeking mental health counseling with fire anniversary

When the Carr and Mendocino Complex fires erupted only days apart in late July, local crisis counselors began seeing a spike in local residents having trouble sleeping and feeling anxious, isolated and withdrawn.

That trend is expected to continue as the community marks the anniversary of the devastating wildfires that ripped through the North Bay one year ago.

Data collected by FEMA-?funded crisis counselors in Sonoma County shows the number of people receiving counseling increased from 2,468 in June to 3,832 in July - a 55 percent increase.

In August - as fires continued to fill Northern California skies with smoke - crisis counselors encountered an additional 5,485 Sonoma County residents seeking support, according to the county’s California HOPE crisis counseling program.

“There were massively large fires going all around us,” said Wendy Wheelwright, California HOPE project manager. “That was really tough for a lot of people with all the smoke in the air.”

Wheelwright said she expects to see a similar spike in September and October due to anniversary commemorations of the 2017 firestorm.

The California HOPE program was launched in Sonoma County soon after the October wildfires, which killed 24 people and destroyed 5,319 homes in Sonoma County.

As part of FEMA’s response to the disaster, federal funds were used to create a crisis counseling assistance and training program in Sonoma.

The program provides community outreach, counseling and other mental health services to survivors of both natural and man-made disasters. The first phase of the program utilized county mental health staff, who were dispatched to schools, evacuation centers and shelters.

The second stage, which was mobilized in early spring, established four teams of 36 trained crisis counselors who since then have been conducting outreach in the community. They’ve attended community events, town halls, neighborhood meetings - anywhere one might expect to encounter people affected by the fires, Wheelwright said. The counselors, who often work in pairs, also meet with families or individuals wherever they can.

“They meet at work or in a coffee shop,” Wheelwright said. “They also do group and public education events.”

Wheelwright said the counseling is limited to people who lost homes or loved ones in last year’s fires, along with people who were evacuated or even sheltered someone who was evacuated.

“It’s anyone who’s feeling an emotional impact from going through that experience,” she said.

The emotional impact of the fires will undoubtedly outlast the time it takes to rebuild a home, Wheelwright said. “A community recovers more quickly if you attend to the emotional as well as the physical needs,” she said.

The program’s crisis counseling data shows that in April, around the six-month anniversary, roughly 35 percent of participants reported experiencing isolation and withdrawal. A month later, more than 45 percent reported feeling hypervigilant.

Debbie Mason, CEO of Healthcare Foundation Northern Sonoma County, which is heading the Wildfire Mental Health Collaborative, said she’s seeing a similar increase in people seeking mental health services. The collaborative provides disaster-?related training for local mental health professionals, drop-in support groups and trauma-informed yoga classes for fire survivors, among other services.

Mason said the collaborative’s website, www.mysonomastrong.com, has had 1,659 visitors and 10,616 page views in the past eight weeks. The collaborative recently launched the major media campaign and expects a dramatic increase in people seeking help.

“We feel like we have all the resources in place so people can start taking care of the angst and frustration that they’re feeling to better prepare for this really being a long haul,” Mason said. “Recovery is a long-term process. Part of getting through that is having the mental health stability and bandwidth to make it through the marathon.”

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.