May is Mental Health Awareness Month, which is a time to bring awareness to this pervasive issue affecting millions of Americans and people worldwide.
Within the past couple of years, this country has been facing a crisis that can no longer be ignored, the number of Americans dealing with mental health continues to grow.
Mental Illness is the emerging post-Covid reality that a building crisis of poorly treated mental illness, anxiety, depression and suicide, writes Daniel Henninger, Opinion Columnist, Wonder Land, The Wall Street Journal.
Depression, self-harm and suicide are rising among young people. Suicide, already the second leading cause of death among people 15 to 34 before the pandemic, has increased.
The 2020 pandemic highlighted the significance of prioritizing mental health yet the number of those walking around untreated continues to grow. At some point, we will have to realize that mental health is a serious crisis for the country.
America is facing a national mental health crisis that could yield serious health and social consequences for years to come. —American Psychological Association (APA).
According to the Centers for Disease Contro and Prevention (CDC), a study released in August 2020 that showed that over 40 percent of adults in the United States reported dealing with mental health challenges or substance use.
Additionally, suicidal ideation continues to increase among adults in the U.S. The number of youth struggling with depression has increased, according to Mental Health America.
What’s alarming is that more than 50 percent of of adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment, totaling over 20 million adults in the United States who are being untreated. White youth with depression were more likely to receive mental health treatment while Asian-Americans youth were least likely to receive mental health care.
Many Americans spent the 26 months of the pandemic drinking too much alcohol or using drugs. One result: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just reported a record number of deaths from drug overdoses last year, nearly 108,000 and 15% higher than 2020, prominently from fentanyl.
Absent medical treatment, some of the most severely mentally ill individuals self-medicate on the street with alcohol or drugs, turn violent and typically end up in filling the jails and prisons across the country.
The solution to the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1970s emptied the mental hospitals was supposed to be outpatient “community care.” It never happened.
With the incidence of disorders and suicides rising, there will be postmortems on the damage done during the pandemic to young people. With their schools closed, some isolated from friends and disintegrated inside social-media sites like TikTok or the online cauldrons.
It was clear the lockdowns and closings were wrecking mental health, especially among children and teens. Sadly, the National Institute of Mental Health did not have a seat at the decision table at the national level. Political officials ceded complete control of pandemic policy to public-health authorities. Next time, private and personal mental health should get a voice.
Between the social isolation, economic instability, political turmoil, racial violence, death and sickness, and overall uncertainty about the future, it is no wonder that mental health in America is on the decline, that depression and anxiety levels are on the rise, and that the demand for mental health and addiction treatment is skyrocketing.
Mental disorder has become too pervasive to sweep under a rug. The current national solution has been to let families alone pick up the broken pieces. It’s not enough.
Write henninger@wsj.com.
Your mental health matters!
Mental health is just as important as physical health. Good mental health helps you cope with stress and improve your quality of life.
References:
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-pandemic-mental-illness-homelessness-buffalo-shooting-online-hospital-11652906894
- https://afro.com/mental-health-in-a-pandemic-take-it-seriously/
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/nurturing-self-compassion/202103/is-mental-health-crisis-the-next-pandemic
- https://go.usa.gov/xuQPu #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth