(Spirit Lake)– 2020 was another fairly busy year for a Spirit Lake facility that provides assistance for those suffering from chemical and substance abuse issues. Julie Scheib is the Executive Director of Discovery House in Spirit Lake…
“Last year we served 91 percent of Iowa residents and that remained pretty consistent from the year before. As you can see 21 percent were from Dickinson county and Spirit Lake had six percent, Milford 15 percent. In total we served 101 residents for a total of 2,126 nights. The average length of stay was a little over two months and our average monthly census has remained pretty consistent at eight residents per month. The average nights of stay last year was 177 nights.”
She says there was a bit of a shift in one area of the demographics…
“For the first time ever since I’ve been keeping records, we had more female residents than male. I don’t know if this is a trend or just a one time occurrence, but we’ll keep track of that. I just thought it was interesting that never before had there been more women than men. The age demographic, we saw a few more 18 to 24 percent this past year, in age, and we doubled the number of 61 years and older age group. Co-occurring disorders, substance abuse, 91 percent; mental health 50 percent, employed full or part time at discharge, this number was down a little bit which we would expect due to the pandemic. Clean and sober has remained, even increased over the last year, 62 percent; relapsed 24 percent. And as you can see our major referral sources, friends and family and treatment centers, and then our website.”
Scheib says gifts and donations during 2020 remained fairly consistent with previous years while they’ve seen a reduction in visitors over the past year, largely due to the pandemic.
