WINDER, Ga. — About an hour after the shooting began at Apalachee High School, ambulances began arriving at nearby Georgia Northeast Medical Center in Barrow with two students and two adults suffering from panic attacks and severe anxiety, not gunshot wounds.
A fifth patient with similar symptoms was later admitted to another local facility, a health official said.
The day after the Sept. 4 school shooting that killed two students and two teachers, about 80 families showed up at the district office to get counseling from volunteer therapists who came from across the Atlanta metropolitan area, according to one provider. That Sunday, nine people received free treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder at a local church from Atlanta volunteer providers. On Monday, the state a temporary recovery center has opened to help local residents find counseling, faith-based support, or other assistance. The needs are still great.
“We don’t really know how we’re doing,” said Amanda Mackey, whose son, Asa Deslond, is a senior at Apalachee, two days after the shooting. “It’s happening every second. It’s happening every minute. The last couple of days have been unimaginable.”
When shootings of any scale occur, survivors are often left with invisible injuries that can create life-changing symptoms that sometimes paralyze themBut such problems may not show up right away. Panic attacks and anxiety can flare up in a community after a shooting and may be most intense when people return to the scene, he said. Howard LiuChairman of the Communications Council American Psychiatric Association.
So health care providers worry that in the coming days, months and years, the community will struggle to find help for its mental health needs. Barrow County, located along the highway that connects Atlanta to the college town of Athens, is a community where agriculture is steadily giving way to development.
Before the shooting, the area had one free-standing inpatient mental health facility, located in Gainesville, about 30 miles from the Barrow County shooting, that was “constantly overwhelmed,” said Sean Couch, a spokesman for Northeast Georgia Health System. And the latest federal data shows that Barrow will need to add at least 13 full-time providers to no longer be considered a mental health workforce shortage area.
“We’re putting a Band-Aid on a chronic situation, and that Band-Aid isn’t going to last,” said Roland Bem, co-founder of the Georgia Mental Health Policy Partnership, an advocacy group representing mental health organizations in the state. “What happens in three months?”
The shortage of mental health providers in Barrow County is emblematic of the state as a whole. Georgia ranks near the bottom among states in access to mental health resources, according to Mental Health in Americaa nonprofit that advocates for increased spending on mental health. More 5 million Georgians live in areas where there is a shortage of mental health professionals, such as Barrow County.
Paying for mental health care to treat such trauma is a challenge across the country. But Georgia is one of 10 states that not fully extended right for Medicaid, the nation's safety net for low-income people and the largest payer of mental health services. The state's uninsured rate is 13.6 percent, 4.1 percentage points higher than the national rate, according to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Even people with private health insurance have difficulty finding affordable in-network mental health care because of a shortage of providers willing to accept low insurance reimbursement rates, Bem said.
Tamara Conlin, CEO Advantage Behavioral Health Systemssaid people who showed up for the first counseling sessions her group helped organize at the county office showed intense sadness and anxiety.
“Some of them are still in shock and trying to come to terms with what happened,” she said.
Even before the shooting, Apalachee High School students reported serious mental health issues.
About 200 of the 1,725 students surveyed reported having seriously considered attempting suicide one or more times in the previous year, the study found. Georgia's Latest Student Health SurveyThe main motivators were problems with peers, friends or family. About half of the students who responded said they had felt sad, depressed or isolated at least once in the previous 30 days.
County residents complained about having to travel for mental health care and said “a shortage of psychologists and counseling services has led to high rates of untreated anxiety and depression” in 2019. focus group on access to health care.
Lack of mental health care has remained a major problem in the region for subsequent assessment in 2022That year, Barrow County's opioid overdose death rate was among the highest in Georgia, according to status dataand the five-year suicide rate was above the state average.
The Barrow County School System, which includes Apalachee High School, received $1.8 million federal grant increase mental health resources in schools from 2023 to 2028.
But in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, mental health providers across the region were still scrambling to gather free resources for area residents. Three volunteers helped with the response last Wednesday at Northeast Georgia Medical Center Barrow. Advantage Behavioral Health Systems kept its clinic in Barrow open Sunday and is providing counselors for community events and local schools when they reopen.
William Smith, who runs the EMDR Center in Atlanta, plans to conduct sessions using eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy to treat PTSD – at least one for first responders and another for residents.
On the weekend, Charity of the Lutheran Church Nine golden retrievers were brought in as “comfort dogs” to help the grieving. The group's dogs have been deployed to other school shootings, including the massacre in Uvalde, Texas.
“We can't fix what they're feeling,” volunteer Paul Sost said as people gathered around the campus flagpole, where they brought flowers and messages. “We can provide comfort.”
Many health care providers expect the community's needs to increase dramatically once students return to Apalachee High School and national attention to the shooting subsides.
“That’s when people start to experience trauma,” says Conlin of Advantage Behavioral Health Systems, who compares the current crisis to the surge in patients she saw after the immediate threat of the COVID-19 pandemic passed.
Before the shooting, her clinic in Barrow County already had about 750 active clients, about 120 of whom were under 18.
McKee said she knows the recovery process will be long for her son, Asa. One of his soccer coaches, Richard Aspinwallwas among the four killed. She said the turning point came the day after the shooting, when the school's head football coach called the team together to share how much he was hurting.
“The coach acknowledged that they were injured and encouraged them to accept that as a fact,” McKee said. “They are not physical injuries sustained through a senseless act, but they are injuries nonetheless.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, please call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting '988'.