Youth Mental Health Awareness Event Held at High School
21% of all children between the ages of 13 and 18 are suffering from a mental illness severe enough to impair them every day. In the Manchester School District, that could be as many as 200 children. 8% of children have a mental illness so severe that they can’t function without assistance. And yet, for most families, the time between when parents first notice symptoms in their child, and when the child finally gets treatment can be as much as 10 years.
NAMI representative speaks to small group of Manchester residents about mental health issues.
These and other startling facts were communicated to fewer than 15 people in room 100 of Manchester High School on Tuesday December 10th, from 6pm to 7pm. Robert Nassauer, a representative of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Washtenaw County was invited to give the talk in order to raise awareness in the community about mental health issues faced by parents, teachers and students.
In addition to being an educator, Mr. Nassauer was also a struggling parent. When his daughter was in middle school, she began to behave strangely. Like most parents, he thought her behavior was part of the normal struggle of the teen years. But when she was nineteen, and enrolled at a major midwestern university, the stress of the sudden change was too much. Six years after her parents first noticed symptoms, Nassauer’s daughter had a complete psychotic break. She never finished college, and has been medicated and struggling ever since.
Manchester Community Schools Superintendent Cherie Vannatter greets Robert Nassauer after his presentation.
Mr. Nassauer has since committed his life to preventing this from happening to other parents. The goal of his presentation was to raise awareness because the number one problem facing mentally ill students is this lack of awareness. People do not want to talk about mental illness, they do not want to admit their family suffers from it, and they do not want to seek help when they suspect it. NAMI is an organization primarily dedicated to breaking down those barriers. Once the stigma of mental illness is reduced, then children and adults will be more likely to receive treatment.
To that end, Mr. Nassauer laid out a simple argument:
Mental Illness is a physical disease. It’s like cancer, or diabetes. In this case, the organ it attacks is the brain, and the symptoms manifest in a person’s behavior.
There are drugs that can treat mental illness. There are also many non-drug therapies. There is HOPE.
Tragically though, there is currently no simple set of blood tests for any mental illnesses. It can only be diagnosed indirectly, through observation.
If a fifth of adolescents suffer from mental illness in some way, and about one tenth of them are severely impaired, why does it take as much as ten years for a person to receive treatment after the first symptoms appear?
As a society, we have stopped investing in mental health services. We have closed down hospitals, and reduced the numbers of counselors, social workers and psychologists in our schools.
And yet, half of all lifetime cases of mental illness start at the age of 14. To put another way, half of all adult sufferers of a mental illness could have been treated when they were children, and could have been saved a lot of suffering, but most were not.
75% of all lifetime cases of mental illness start by the age of 24. If a person makes it through college without incident, they are statistically much more likely to remain healthy. High School and College is the clear time to intervene.
And yet, sadly, we know that intervention is not happening. According to Nassauer, 2/3rds of all mentally ill adolescents DO NOT receive treatment. And this leads to a set of terrible outcomes.
On average, 50% of mentally ill youth drop out of school. And of the children imprisoned in the juvenile justice system, fully 70% have a mental illness, 20% have a SEVERE mental illness. As we have reduced the money spent on mental health care, we have increased the amount we spend imprisoning the mentally ill. Juvenile Prison is more accurately a hospital by another name. A cruel hospital.
Tragically, all of this ignores the real scourge. Suicide is the leading cause of death among young people between 15 and 24 years of age. And 90% of all suicides have an underlying mental illness.
About 15% of ALL high school students have considered suicide. About 10% have planned it, and about 7% have attempted it.
Luckily, in Washtenaw County we have a series of resources that can help. If you have concern about a loved one and want to find out how to get help, there is one number.
734-544-3050 (or 1-800-440-7548). This is called the Access line, and it is run by Community Mental Health. The service runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When you call it, the operator will be able to connect you to the best mental health and/or substance abuse assistance for your specific case. The Youth and Family Services program at Community Mental Health is run by Director Elizabeth Spring.
If you want more general information about mental health issues, and direction for further information, you can contact NAMI of Washtenaw County. They website is namiwc.org. Their phone number is 734-994-6611.
In addition to hosting awareness raising events like this one, NAMI also offers a longer multi-week program called Family-to-Family. This evidence-based course is broken down into 12 once-a-week sessions. It helps train parents and caregivers to support those people with severe mental illness while still maintaining their own well-being. NAMI will host a Family-to-Family course, or a simpler program for children called BASICS, for your group for free. They only need a minimum of 12 participants to come. It takes them about a month lead time to prepare the program, and they can tailor it to the needs of your group.
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