not so USELESS RAMBLINGS not so USELESS RAMBLINGS Mental Health

merely a problem. More than half identified mental health issues among children and teenagers as a crisis, as well as severe mental illness in adults.

Once again I find myself starting completely from scratch at the 11th hour. I thought I knew what I wanted to write about. I researched it, took notes, read almost an entire book, wrote two thirds of a piece, and completely lost interest. Honestly, the topic just didn’t intrigue me enough to keep my interest. It didn’t inspire me enough to make the creative juices flow. So into the scrap heap it went.

So now what do I write about? I checked Twitter for something that might spark interest. What a snooze fest. I looked back at some of my random thoughts on the book of faces. Then it occurred to me that social media has given me a topic every time I look at it, I just chose to ignore the signs. Just like most people see the signs, but either dismiss them or actively ignore them.

In 2019 to 2020, 20.78% of adults were experiencing a mental illness. That is the equivalent to over 50 million Americans. Over 15% of adults suffered from a substance use disorder during the last year. Of them, 93.5% did not receive any form of treatment.

The percentage of adults reporting serious thoughts of suicide is almost 5%, totaling over 12.1 million individuals. Eleven percent of adults who identified with two or more races reported serious thoughts of suicide in 2020.

More than 1 out of 10 youths in America are experiencing depression that is severely impairing their ability to function at school or work, at home, with family, or in their social life. 16.39% of youth age 12 - 17 report suffering from at least one major depressive episode in the past year. 11.5% of youth are experiencing severe major depression.

Over half of adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment. Almost a third of adults with a mental illness reported they were not able to receive the treatment they needed. 59.8% of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment.

Everyone knows that an estimated 22 veterans take their own lives every day.

Those stats go on and on. In the U.S. there are an estimated 350 individuals for every ONE mental health provider, but that number may not be entirely correct because it may include providers who are no longer practicing.

An overwhelming majority, 9 out of 10, of adults said they believed that there is a mental health crisis in the US today. Americans put the opioid epidemic near the top, with more than two-thirds of people identifying it as a crisis rather than

Year after year, more so recently, the number of people suffering from mental health issues has increased. As the population continues to grow, so does the number of mental health issues, but the number of psychologists isn’t increasing to match.

Although training more residents in psychiatry by itself won’t completely address rising mental health needs, it remains essential. Creating new residency slots is critical, but providing residency training is costly, and government funding is limited. In 2020, legislation increased Medicaresupported residency slots for the first time in decades. The move added 200 slots annually for five years, spread across the nation and all medical specialties. In addition, the proposed Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act would add another 2,000 annually for seven years. Mostly, though, individual institutions foot the bill for any new psychiatry slots.

I look around social media, in the mainstream media, and in my daily real life experiences and I’m surrounded by examples of untreated mental illness. The U.S. has gone from treating mental illness to embracing and glorifying it. Fifty years ago if you attempted to claim you were a cat, you’d have been locked in a padded room. Twenty years ago you would have been medicated, received monthly visits to a shrink, but mostly left to yourself. Today, we have parents of young people that claim to identify as a “furry”, advocating for litter boxes in the school restrooms!

The psychiatric diagnosis of gender identity disorder was introduced in 1980. In 1994 it changed to transsexualism. Today we call it gender dysphoria. There seems to be a trend, in many facets of life, which see us softening the verbiage for the exact same situation. In our attempt to destigmatize the affliction, we have unwittingly embraced and normalized it. Think about “shell shock.” In the First World War, it was shell shock. The second world war it became battle fatigue. The Korean War gave it the name Operational Exhaustion and during the Vietnam War it was renamed again to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. The exact same disorder, but with a lot less harsh sounding name.

We soften the language, we normalize, we stop treating, and people suffer.

Unfortunately, there has been a growing trend; a disturbing trend. We are seeing, more frequently, a breakdown of mental health so great that people are turning to violence. I have seen multiple examples of social media videos that call for violence against those of us that will not embrace and participate in the delusions of the mentally unstable. I’ve seen an attempt to create a national day of violence; a call to arms, if you will, that suggests there be mass gatherings of people with the same disorder to take to the streets and cause a violent uprising.

Still even more disturbing is what used to be a suicide attempt is now becoming a mass casualty event that inevitably ends with suicide by cop. After these events we almost always see news reports about a friend or loved one coming forward with information that they saw warning signs. Sometimes we find out that law enforcement had interactions with this person, but didn’t follow through with the warning signs. Sometimes it’s complacency, sometimes it’s just plain laziness, other times it’s the lack of programs that specialize in assisting those in a mental health crisis.

This country is severely lacking in qualified mental healthcare professionals… and it shows.

David McCoy

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david@thunderroadsiowa.com

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