Mental Health Awareness Month

By Maureen Wendt, President/CEO

For seventy years, our country has celebrated May as Mental Health Awareness Month to raise awareness about mental health conditions and the importance of mental wellness for all. This year, Mental Health Awareness Month has two goals:

1. Sharing comprehensive, helpful, and informative mental health awareness resources.
2. Reducing stigma around mental health disorders.

The Covid 19 pandemic has had an even more profound impact on the mental health of people of all ages.  Now more than ever, it’s critical to reduce the stigma around mental health struggles because stigma often prevents individuals from seeking help. We have all been touched by mental health challenges of anxiety, grief, isolation, and stress whether by the direct assault of the virus on our personal lives and that of our friends and family, or its impact on our livelihood and day-to-day welfare. That’s what makes this year’s Mental Health Awareness Month so special and so important.

It’s important for everyone to recognize there’s no shame in having a mental health problem. We all struggle with mental or emotional issues at some point during our lives, whether those issues are with self-esteem, stress, sadness, loneliness, anger, anxiety, or depression. Some of us experience a combination of all of them.

When you struggle with emotions, it’s always best to talk to someone. We all know that. talking helps. Getting help for an emotional or mood disorder is no different. It’s advanced talking to someone. It’s talking to someone who’s an expert in helping people with the issue you face. Nothing makes more sense than that. Getting help for a mental health disorder is also no different than getting help with a physical issue. When something goes wrong, you see doctor. When you find out exactly what’s wrong, you see a specialist.

That’s exactly how mental health treatment works. First, you get a screening. If your screening indicates an underlying mental health issue, then you receive a referral to a specialist. There’s no reason for shame or embarrassment, and there’s no reason to avoid treatment when it’s recommended.

I want to talk briefly about the stigma around mental health in the U.S. Historically, mental illness has been viewed as negative, something bad, as though the person who has mental illness could have prevented it in some way or chosen a different path.  Even today, with all the advancements in every aspect of our culture, when someone discloses they have a mental illness the general public turns the other cheek and typically does not want to interact. It’s important that public perception about mental health disorders change. If we have a heart condition, cancer, or some other medical condition – we seek help right away.  We need to get to a point where we think of getting assistance with mental illness in the same light as a physical illness.

The stigma associated with mental illness often leads people to be too embarrassed to speak to their doctor about it, causing a delay or failure in receiving treatment.  My hope is that people gain a deeper understanding of the pervasiveness of mental health issues and have openness to recognizing mental health concerns with yourself or those you love and taking the first step to getting help.

1 in 4 American adults live with a diagnosable, treatable mental health condition and the fact is that they can go on to live full and productive lives. Mental illness is more common than cancer, diabetes or heart disease, making it the leading cause of disability in the United States.   As Americans, we are so frightened by mental illness, or the stigma associated with it, that we do a fairly good job of ignoring it.

The coronavirus pandemic has been a source of a great deal of stress for the entire country. There are scores of reasons Covid 19 increased stress. Those concerns are all real, and all valid. Mental Health America offers practical advice about these worries: realize what you can control, and let go of what you can’t. Things they point out that you can control include:

• Your mind and body. You can eat well, get enough sleep, and get plenty of exercise.
• Your environment. You can control who comes and goes in your home, where you go, and the health precaution you take at home and when you go out
• Things you consume. You can control the news you watch and the information you read. Tip – listen to the health experts at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization

The list of things you can’t control is virtually endless. Suffice it to say that you can’t control what anyone else does or says. Practice controlling what we can and letting go of what we can’t: easy to say, everyone’s challenge to do.

It’s easy to talk about mental health, but it’s not always easy to handle psychological and emotional problems when they arise. As part of Mental Health Awareness Month 2023, the people at Mental Health America created a list of five things that everyone can do to support strong mental health:

1. Own the feelings: The ability to recognize, identify, and talk about your feelings is the first step toward managing the most difficult ones.
2. Find the positive: The best way to do this is to make a list of the things in life for which you are grateful. Positivity will follow from gratitude – we promise.
3. Connect with others: It’s important to reach out to family, friends, and peers via telephone, messaging, or video chat. Social contact can lift your spirits, and sometimes, having a real heart-to-heart with a friend can make all the difference.
4. Eliminate toxic influences: This is a time when you can identify the things in your life that are toxic, and remove them from your life, one by one. This includes toxic people, toxic habits, and toxic patterns of thought.

5. Create healthy routines: This is a great time to start small and build on incremental, daily successes. You can do this with food, exercise, sleep habits, and media consumption, all of which can either support or undermine mental health. Make proactive choices to create routines that support positive mental health and leave the routines that undermine mental health behind, along with all the things you deemed toxic.

If you need to seek the help of a specialist, help is available and I encourage people who are pushed to their limit to not suffer in silence. The Dale Association has been providing mental health services since 1974 and has a long history of helping people achieve wellness.  The Dale Association is a unique not for profit organization who has been responding to needs of adults in our Niagara community for over 70 years, and whose mission is to provide comprehensive services and coordinate connections for adults in Niagara and neighboring counties which enhance their health and wellness and empower them to build bridges into their communities.    This important mission is the focal point of each program – including our Senior Services, Mental Health Services, and Caregiver Support Services.  For more information about The Dale Association, please visit www.daleassociation.com. To talk to somebody about setting up an appointment for mental health services, please call (716) 693-9961 or (716)433-1937.