>>How a woman in rural South Dakota got the mental health treatment that changed her life

When Dione Rowe, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner working for Southern Plains Behavioral Health Services in Winner, met Lyn Fullen, the two could barely have a conversation.

“She couldn’t hardly visit or keep a conversation flowing between the two of us,” Rowe said.

Fullen, 64, is part of the estimated 1% of the U.S. population who lives with schizophrenia and one of at least 30,000 South Dakotans living with a serious mental illness. She was at the rural behavioral health care clinic, which serves the counties of Gregory, Todd, Tripp and Mellette, looking to access services that could help her live life beyond her mental illness.

In South Dakota, most patients either seek treatment from private practice physicians, local hospitals or a community funded behavioral health clinic.

Fullen is also one out of the 17,333 children and adults living with serious mental illness who received treatment at a community-funded behavioral health clinic in South Dakota during 2022.

And according to the Department of Social Services, which oversees behavioral health clinics that receive public funding, 93% of adult clients reported ease and convenience when accessing behavioral health services.

About a year later, after starting a treatment plan and shifting between different medication, Rowe remembers the day Fullen and her husband walked in to the facility.

“I honestly didn’t think I’d ever seen this person before,” Rowe said, adding Fullen had switched to the new medication a month prior.

Rowe described Fullen as wearing make-up and wearing weather appropriate shoes. Fullen told Rowe she was thinking of getting a job, something unimaginable a few months prior when Fullen was so tired, she couldn’t mop the floor without having to lay down to take a break.

Fullen’s husband was in tears.

“He said, ‘I don’t know who she is. I have never known this person and I’m so thankful for the services that you guys provide here,’” Rowe said.

Fullen said the new medication “was like a wake up.” It was “like Christmas Day.”

From barely functioning to waking up

Fullen was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2009. Her parents had both lived with schizophrenia as well.

While genetics can be a cause for schizophrenia, there’s also environmental and physical factors as well, according to The National Institute of Mental Health.

Fullen said she had started hearing voices and hallucinating.

“I was having trouble telling the real world from the imaginary world. I was dreaming while I was still awake,” she said, adding she started having trouble functioning in society.

When Fullen visited Southern Plains for the first time, after she moved from Phoenix to Winner in 2019 and was accepted as a patient, she remembers crying. It was a relief “somebody would show mercy to me,” she said.

In Phoenix, her doctors put her on drugs “they put everybody on that made you like a zombie.”

“I was so sick, seeing things, hearing things, that I couldn’t get possibly normal enough to communicate to people,” Fullen said. “I thought I was losing my mind and that I was going to have to go to a mental institution.”

Rowe said part of the treatment involved Fullen trying a few medications and once they found the right medication during the first year they worked together, a switch flipped.

But medication isn’t the entire story though, Rowe said.

“[Lyn] was a willing participant and wanted to get better,” she said.

The reward of providing needed services

Rowe, who has worked in the mental health field since 2008 and has been a practicing mental health nurse since 2015, said her job is a rewarding one.

“The most rewarding part is seeing patients improve and do better,” she said, adding aside from providing medication treatments, she also helps patients figure out how to access resources within their communities.

Rowe understands that in rural communities, it can be difficult to find mental health help because of the shortage of providers and barriers, like traveling to access care, or the lack of having access to transportation or even when weather creates challenges to such access.

And although South Dakota has multiple rural community health centers that offer therapy, substance use disorder treatment and medication management, Rowe thinks there’s room for improvement.

“I think there’s always more that can be done just because South Dakota is such a rural area anyway,” she said. “We’re impoverished in certain areas. We have underinsured or noninsured residents in our state, so expanding access to behavioral health would be beneficial in every way possible.”

Having easy access to mental health services can also result in a number of savings, from financial costs to reducing the likelihood of future emergency behavioral health situations and the toll an untreated mental health illness can have on someone’s family, Rowe said.

“To improve early access, we need to reduce those barriers by helping promote patients getting help, seeking help,” she said. “We want patients to be as independent as possible.”

Enjoying life

Fullen now works part-time at a local hotel in the breakfast bar, something she didn’t think would’ve been possible without the right medication.

Most of the voices she used to hear have gone away except one, Fullen said. She’s alert and can focus on work. She can do her hair and put on make-up because the shaking she used to experience as a side-effect from previous medication has now gone away.

“I just felt like a brand new person,” Fullen said when she noticed the changes. “I just felt like I saw other people feel on TV.”

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Southern Plains Behavioral Health increases access to care in rural SD