The government's  COVID response may not be as busy as it was last year, but at the Guam Behavioral Health and Wellness Center they're still flooded with calls for people in need of help.

"You  can see that the community is in crisis," shared Therese Arriola. That's her diagnosis as the agency's executive director, as she and her staff have been seeing and hearing from patients on a daily basis.

"We're averaging about 600 calls a month at the height it was 800, so it has not dipped down at all," she noted.

According to Arriola the types of calls they're fielding are from individuals who have suicide ideations, or from residents experiencing anxiety and depression. She says there's two ways to look at it.

"That's always a good thing because it means number one people are getting over whatever kind of stigma they might have had to reach out and get the help they need, but it's also a major indicator that our community is ill very ill," she said.

As a matter of fact, out of the 600 monthly calls into the Crisis Hotline, a third require intensive services. "Some of those suicide ideations go right into asking them to please stop by and getting the help they need, because it really is only a psychiatrist who can determine whether they are truly in crisis whether they can, they fit the criteria of being admitted into our Crisis Stabilization Unit that we operate at the department. And so there's a big correlation when you've been running 90 to 100 percent beds in the stabilization unit and the number of calls on the hotline as high as it is," Arriola explained.

Coping with COVID, however isn't GBHWC's only priority but also fighting a problem that has been plaguing the island for years. "The COVID pandemic is not the pandemic its a pandemic that we were faecd with and probably hit the hardest in front of our face that we had to deal with but we have been dealing with a decades long pandemic of drugs on this island," she said.

Arriola and her team will be appearing before the Guam Legislature on Tuesday for the budget oversight hearing. Not only will they provide an autopsy on the agency's COVID response but the future programs and funds needed for a litany of projects on the horizon such as the construction of a new detox unit and a new drug recovery center in Talofofo.