Rural Nevada mental health services more accessible due to pandemic

The Downing Clinic at the University of Nevada, Reno is making mental health services more accessible to rural Nevada through telehealth counseling appointments.

"Someone in an urban area is going to have access to a lot more resources," Megan Little, director of the Downing Clinic in the College of Education and Human Development, said. "Here in Reno, there's tons of agencies as well as a lot of private practices. In a rural community, depending on the size of the town, there may only be one counselor in that community or one mental health professional. If someone needs psychiatric medication, they may need to go to a primary care doctor instead of a psychiatrist because of the lack of mental health services in their area."

The pandemic has forced all mental health services and a lot of medical services to provide telehealth. If living a long distance from Reno, residents can get connected with a mental health professional in Reno via computer or telephone. 

"You can be scheduled for services right away instead of having to wait three months on a waitlist in your community or having to do a long commute to come to a counseling session," Little said. "If someone in a rural community has been thinking about it, now is a prime time to get into mental health services."

Deciding what type of services you want or need is the first step in connecting with mental health services. Then based on your needs you can choose the best fit for these services for instance if you are in need of family counseling, working with someone who specializes in family work will be important and you may even be able to find someone who niches even more to match your family make up like counselors who work with blended families. Then determine whether to work with a psychologist, a social worker, a marriage and family therapist or a clinical mental health counselor. 

"Some of the issues we are seeing with our clients from rural Nevada are universal to what everyone is experiencing during the pandemic - loneliness, depressive symptoms, anxiety, family/ relationship conflict," Little said. "There seems to be a stigma around receiving mental health support in rural areas. It seems to be from a lack of understanding of mental health and viewing it as a foreign concept instead of normalizing it to being similar to our physical health. We will quickly go see a medical doctor if something doesn't seem right for us physically and we need to work to transition that mindset into our mental health as well."

To break the stigma people need to normalize mental health, people who have received their own mental health services can help with that.

"For example, a male who has gone to counseling then opens up to other males about how he went to counseling to take care of his mental wellbeing changes the conversation and makes mental health services seem less intimidating when we know someone who has been through the process.," she said."

It would be wonderful if rural communities were able to put technology for telehealth sessions into private rooms in settings like a community center, public libraries where members of the community could rent out these spaces for their sessions. This would make services accessible to anyone no matter their resource level."

The Downing Counseling Clinic at the University of Nevada, Reno offers sliding scale fees, since the graduate students conducting the sessions are in their last year of training before becoming counselors. The sliding scale is special because some people might not want to have mental health services billed on their insurance or might not have insurance at all. The clinic can often still accommodate people in financial distress because of lost jobs or tight expenses.

The best way to get scheduled with the Downing Counseling Clinic is to email their office.

Megan Little is the director of the Downing Clinic. She is a licensed professional counselor with her doctorate in Counselor Education and Supervision from the University of Arkansas. Her clinical background has been focused on college mental health and interpersonal trauma work. She teaches clinically focused classes such as pre-practicum and practicum while also overseeing the Downing Clinic.