St. Luke's Erin Metzger fights for mentally ill in Northland

By: NICOLE BRODZIK, Lake Voice She sits behind a desk cluttered with paperwork and coffee mugs, asking those in the room if she can get anyone a drink.

“I’ve got two young children, I’m always aware of people’s caffeine levels,” St. Luke’s Hillside Clinic manager Erin Metzger said.

For some, being in a mental health facility can be an intimidating, but Metzger is clearly at ease in her office at St. Luke’s Hillside Center, home to the hospital’s outpatient mental health facility. Her daily life consists of working with patients dealing with illnesses ranging from depression and bipolar disorder to Alzheimer’s and dementia and helping them function and thrive in the Duluth community.

The goal of Metzger and the St. Luke’s Hillside Center staff is not only to help patients get to a better, more stable place, but also to remind those in Duluth that the issues their patients face aren’t all that uncommon.

“I think we’re really trying to start talking about these things, bringing awareness to mental illness and what it actually is-- that it’s not just something made up, “ Metzger said.

The drive to help and support patients stems from a personal connection with mental illness, as some of her family members are affected by the issues she sees at St. Luke’s every day.

“Mental illness has touched everyone’s lives,” the St. Scholastica grad said. “I’ve had some family that have mental health issues.”

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While she currently serves a managerial role at the outpatient clinic, Metzger spent three years as an inpatient registered nurse. During that time she assisted in treating the “seriously and persistently mentally ill” and said that in both positions she witnessed things on a daily basis that had an emotional impact on her.

“Everyday there’s something that like, oh my gosh, go home and hug your kids or be really thankful for what you have,” Metzger said.

But despite the emotional burden that comes with work like those in her field do on a daily basis, this clinic manager has no plans on changing fields.

“I can’t even let go of the mental health service line,” she said. “It’s something I love and I’m passionate about and that’s where I choose to stay.”

But she and St. Luke’s can’t do it alone. One of the biggest issues she, her staff and the patients they treat face on a daily basis is a lack of resources. With Duluth being a mental health hub in St. Louis County, the number of patients that are sent to the Twin Ports area in increasing every day, but facility numbers have remained stagnant.

“There’s a need,” Metzger said. “We’re getting anywhere between 10-20 referrals for new service a day for the clinic. From a hospital standpoint, it’s extremely difficult to serve those patients because we’re trying to care for patients that are outside of our area.”

With that comes even more difficulties as patients in fragile situations are taken from their support systems.

“You know, the patients don’t like it either, their families aren’t close by and people they know and those sorts of things,” Metzger said. “So it’s a big challenge, our resources are very thin here. We have a wide net that we draw from but we could always use more beds, we could always use more resources.”

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