Street Roots • Oct. 16-22, 2015
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News
A shock
to the
system
Janet Holland heads
the mental health
agency charged with
helping Roseburg heal
after UCC shooting
AMANDA WALDROUPE
STAFF WRITER
71 110:38 on the morning of Oct 1, a
AA 26-year old Umpqua Community
X
student shot and killed nine
students and injured nine more before
killing himself.
Less than two hours later, the community
college s students, faculty and staff were
evacuated to the Douglas County
Fairgrounds where they could call friends
and family to tell them they were safe.
Waiting there were mental health
counselors, therapists and members of
Roseburg’s religious community to provide
emergency grief support
The shooting in Roseburg is the deadliest
in Oregon’s history, and it has rattled the
core of this small, rural community, leaving
residents wondering how something so
violent and atrocious could happen in a town
of 20,000 people.
Janet Holland, the director of the
Community Health Alliance, is overseeing
the mental health care efforts in the wake of
the shooting. The Community Health
Alliance is the state-licensed mental health
provider for Douglas County and provides
mental health care for people on the Oregon
Health Plan and to those who are uninsured.
The Community Health Alliance formed in
July 2014 after the Douglas County board of
commissioners voted to outsource county
mental health care due to funding cuts.
Umpqua Community College re-opened to-
students and staff Oct 5. Counselors were
on campus as well. In that week alone, staff
from the Community Health Alliance, the
Red Cross and a mental health team from
the federal government provided group and
individual counseling to more than 2,000
people.
Umpqua Community College resumed
classes at the beginning of this week.
Holland says 25 counselors will continue to
be available to the campus community.
Holland spoke with Street Roots about
providing effective and compassionate
mental health care in the wake of a disaster.
Amanda Waldroupe: After the shooting,
the students and staff at the community college
wore taken to the fairgrounds. How were you
able to have mental health staff there so
quickly?
Janet Holland: We have a crisis team.
We didn’t deploy anybody who was still
looking for people at the college. We
deployed within an hour to the fair grounds
and started bringing this together. The folks
from the federal government were here
within 10 hours. I was trained in incident
command as the county mental health
director. We’ve always just practiced it
We’ve never done it
A.W.: What is grief counseling? What have
People been talking about?
J.H.: The message we wanted to get out
to everybody is that after a trauma like this
there are some normal reactions that
happen. Sleeplessness, anxiety. Those basic
things, and get the word out for people to
talk about it, tell their story and get support
from other people. 'Then people know, two
or three weeks later, that if they’re still
struggling, they can get help.
It’s not therapy. This is really about
having those connections with people so
they can talk about what happened.
Normalization of what they were feeling.
People were scared, what had happened,
what their concerns were. That was a lot of
what was going on.
A.W.: It’s about connecting with other
people and preventing someone from feeling
isolated.
J.H.: Yes. We have trained staff who are
looking at the people who are having most
difficulties, looking at their emotions, noting
if they are crying or in withdrawal. We made
sure there was outreach. I think the part
that I heard from the staff when I got out
there is that there was a lot of support from
other* Students were coming together.
This is about hearing and supporting and
compassion. Making sure there’s a warm
hand-off and that those people don’t get lost
A lot of this was organic.
A.W.: How do you think the shooting has
impacted Roseburg?
J.H.: This is a small community. We know
each other. There isn’t anybody on my staff
that doesn’t know somebody who was
affected. Those impacts are huge across the
community. It is our community college. You
have people who went to school with several
of the victims who were shot The impact is
large.
A.W.: What community-wide trauma will
Roseburg face?.
J.H.: There is something that is called
post-traumatic growth. Instead of trauma,
there is growth. Disaster can bring some
communities closer. People have new
opportunities, new goals, new values. Out of
that, instead of the community being
immobilized and stuck or unhealthy, you see
the opposite.
A.W.: What is the Community Health
doing in the coming
months as Roseburg continues to deal with
what’s happened?
J.H.: We’re looking at expansion of
mental health resources. The impact of this
is going to be felt for decades. We’re looking
at outreach efforts. We’re looking at multiple
avenues for additional funding. One of the
goals I have is to do outreach in all of the
schools. What we want is more of a
preventative aspect of identifying kids who
may be struggling. We can offset the long
term trauma symptoms that may result from
things like this. So, a clinician would rotate
through all of the schools.
A.W.: When you talked about trying to find
kids who’ve experienced some trauma, I
immediately thought of the shooter. Reports say
that he was socially isolated, from a divorced
family and may have had mental health
problems. How do you find those people who
may be flying under the radar? You can’t
necessarily sit a kid down and say, “you could
really use some mental health care.”
J.H.: Our public health folks have a whole
different lens on this. One of the
observations they made is that we do tend
A.W.: It seems like Roseburg is already
to focus on schools. The other thing is
seeing that - Umpqua Bank set up a Relief
educating the broader community about
Fund the day of the shooting and multiple
mental health first aid. The spiritual
businesses are having benefits and fundraisers.
community has asked to train their clergy
members. We’re going to be doing that. The
J.H.: Yes. It is bringing together cross
other thing that they brought up is that it’s
-sections of people. The fire chief and I have the conversation with department managers
met each other in passing a couple of times.
and folks who are bar and restaurant owners
But we’ve never sat down and talked about * - there are a whole plethora of people who
how we can work better together. You have
can notice things. They don’t always know
certain people you intersect with on a
what to do when they get that information.
regular basis and other populations that you
It is tightening the response from “it’s not
don’t It blows me away sometimes.
my problem” to “it’s a community’s
problem.” That is our best hope.