Getting Past The Stigma Of Mental Health

It’s an interesting path that life gives you. Forgive me this month if I focus on a human subject. I’ll try to tie it into veterinary medicine, however briefly.

I chose to change careers from journalism to veterinary medicine for a huge number of reasons, but one big one was that I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with so much of the crazy human stuff, because our pets don’t have mental health issues. Totally untrue, but many of my animal patients’ concerns can be addressed with behavioral modification and behavioral medications.

For most of 2015, my family has been dealing with a mental health crisis with our oldest daughter – stemming from the multiple caregivers and home changes in foster care she experienced from age zero to just before age five when she and her sister joined our family, coupled with bullying at school. This scary journey has really highlighted how much we as a society cringe away from mental health concerns for both adults and children.

Here’s some really scary statistics:

• One in five children, birth to age 18, has a diagnosable mental disorder, and the onset of major mental illness can occur as early as seven years of age.

• One in 10 children has a serious enough mental health issue to impair how they function at home, in school or in the community.

• Being from a poor family on public assistance, having unemployed or teenage parents, or being in the foster care system raises the likelihood of mental health problems. Twenty-one percent of low-income children between the ages of 6 to 17 have mental health problems and 57 percent of these children come from household at or below the federal poverty level.

• Children in military families also carry a higher risk and rate of mental health problems – 32 percent score as high risk. Much of this can be tied to a parent’s deployment and the stresses on child and family during combat deployment.

• Youth in high school with mental health problems do poorly in school and up to 44 percent drop out of school.

And, getting care for a child with moderate to severe mental health issues is a challenge in and of itself as services can be limited by insurance, by lack of availability and, for many parents, a lack of understanding or a fear of the stigma of mental health issues means that help is never sought.

My daughter is blessed with parents who’ve pushed and prodded to ultimately get her the best care we can and, while we will always be learning and managing, we won’t give up.

But I’ve sat on scary evenings in the exam rooms assigned to children with mental health issues at the emergency room.

I’ve seen so much crazy human stuff that my heart breaks for those families who are overwhelmed to the point of burnout dealing with their child’s problems, and who feel no hope in navigating the sea of bureaucracy that goes along with trying to get help.

Learn more today at sites such as www.nami.org, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill; www.mhcd.org, Mental Health Center of Denver and support great organizations such as www.tennysoncenter.org, The Tennyson Center for Children and www.instituteforattachment.org, The Institute for Attachment and Child Development.

Dr. Margot can be reached at parkhillvet.com