Opioid crisis, mental health prompts new Milford treatment center
Maddy Lauria
People battling substance abuse and living with mental health issues now have a new option for help in southern Delaware.
Brandywine Counseling & Community Services unveiled its new 10,000-square-foot treatment center off Route 113 in Milford on Thursday. The facility has enough space to treat 300 patients and will provide a slew of treatment services from education and prevention, treatment and relapse prevention.
"We know addiction impacts all communities," Brandywine CEO Lynn Fahey said. "Prevention and treatment need to be accessible to the people who need it."
The state Division of Forensic Science predicts this could be Delaware’s deadliest year for addiction, a crisis that has prompted state lawmakers to consider a tax on opioid prescriptions and other legislation aimed at increasing funding and access to treatment.
So far this year, officials suspect 122 people have died from overdoses, although only 30 of those deaths have been confirmed as overdoses. Last year, 345 people died from overdoses — up 12 percent from the 308 people who died in 2016, according to the Division of Forensic Science.
"We are losing, on average, a person a day, in our state, and that is lost dreams, that is lost hope and future," Lieutenant Governor Bethany Hall-Long said. "This is another avenue for access and treatment."
Fahey said Brandywine Counseling, which is a private, nonprofit that receives both state and federal funding, has offered statewide services for seven years, but the Milford site offers a central location and increase in outreach and prevention services for residents of Kent and Sussex counties.
The new facility marks Brandywine's fourth; the other three are in Wilmington and Newark. Brandywine also has a statewide mobile unit that provides screening and evaluations and a second that will soon offer statewide syringe exchanges.
But it's not just about curbing the opioid epidemic.
For 36-year-old Frederica resident Eric Echeverri, the services and treatment offered at the new Milford location have helped him pinpoint the underlying cause that may have led to his two crash-involved DUIs.
"We all had our reservations," he said, noting that he considered a shorter jail sentence instead of lengthy treatment. But, he said he wanted to know what else was going on beyond the drinking.
"They want to help you, even if you don't want it sometimes," he said. "They don't make you feel as if you were an addict. They don't label you. I'm oddly enough very happy I'm in the program because if not, I wouldn't have realized that my accidents, my DUIs, were part of an emotional effect."
Services will include medication-assisted treatment, which uses substances such as methadone, suboxone and vitriol to help people recover from addiction. The center will also offer behavioral health treatment programs and counseling that focuses on the cross-over of substance abuse, mental health and co-occurring disorders.
The new facility has a drop-in center, where up to 50 people each day can stop in to do laundry, take a shower, use the computers to fill out job applications and receive any counseling or treatment needed.
Dr. Sandra Gibney, an emergency room doctor at Saint Francis Hospital, said making contact with people at the drop-in center can be a vital step in reaching people who may not yet realize they need treatment. And if they can be reached, that could ultimately mean fewer lives lost to drugs.
"Once we peel back the layers of substance abuse, we find underlying that that there's a condition they we're treating underneath that," she said. About 60 percent of people struggling with substance abuse also have an underlying condition such as severe depression.
"But I cannot and I will not ... zip another body bag," she said. "I can't. It takes a piece of me when I take a 20-year-old child and tell the parents I couldn't save them. That's what drives me."
News Journal reporters Esteban Parra and Brittany Horn also contributed to this story.
Contact reporter Maddy Lauria at (302) 345-0608, mlauria@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @MaddyinMilford.
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