Even though Eastern Montana Community Mental Health Center provides mental health and substance abuse services across most of the eastern side of the state, it couldn't treat people for drug and alcohol addiction in Dawson County under a 40-year-old law that only allowed one state-approved provider in an area.
“Unfortunately for some of the people that follow the oil, that comes with the consequences of sometimes of drugs and alcohol,” said Novelli, the executive director of center. "There was quite a bit of need for services.”
But this summer the decades-old limit will be lifted and Novelli plans to start offering services out of the center’s satellite office in Glendive.
In the 1970s when there weren’t enough treatment centers, the state established a law against duplicating services as a way to encourage clinics to spread geographically instead of concentrating in a few areas.
“It was set up so that we could have coverage across the state,” said Zoe Barnard, director of the Addictive and Mental Disorders Division of the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. “That was the original intent. But over time it turned into a situation where there couldn’t be any duplication and there was only one.”
