Vivienne, Still An Advocate

 


Yesterday's post was an overview of Mental Health Awareness, focusing on depression and anxiety, focusing on the What of this whole issue. Today I'm going to talk about the Why. Why have a Mental Health Awareness month? Why is this important? There are several answers to this question. First, depression and anxiety (among other things) are bigger issues than you might think, more common than you might know. 

So, naturally, I'm going to share some stats. (I will post links at the bottom of this post so you can do your own research.) According to the CDC website, mental illnesses are one of the most common health issues in the USA. Over half of the people here in this country will be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their life. (I'm paraphrasing from the website, but seriously, Half of Americans!) One out of five Americans will experience mental illness in any given year. Worse, one in five children will have a seriously debilitating mental illness at some point. Generally speaking, One in 25 Americans currently lives with a serious mental illness. That's a lot.

There are a lot of stats I could talk about, but as an overview (again, I'll post the link to my source at the bottom), talking in actual estimated numbers, there are about 17.3 million American adults with depression. There are roughly 3.1 million youths who have depression. (2 million with Severe Depression.) If we're only looking at the people who have suicidal thoughts, there are about 9.8 million. Take a moment to think about those numbers. That's a LOT of people. A lot of people who deal with a similar mental disease, but how many of those people are actually getting help?

According to the Mental Health America website (where I found the numbers above), 56% or 24.6 million of mentally ill adults Did Not get treatments. Worse than that, 20.6% or 9 million adults with mental illness tried and could not get treatment. (This is just adults.) I know this is a lot of numbers, but bear with me for a few more. Looking at the younger population, about 61.5% or 1.8 million depressed youths dont get treatment, but about 25% do get at least some consistent treatment. 

Yes, that was a lot of information, but it's important to have an idea of what things look like in America. I'm not telling you all this to make you sad or upset, I want to provide some background of the issue and why it's so important to talk about. So, why dont people suffering from depression and anxiety get help? Sometimes it's a case of not having insurance or other access to help. I believe a lot of it is stigma. I will go into more about this tomorrow, since this ended up longer than I had expected.

Before we finish for the day, however, I wanted to tell you about something fun, something you can actually get involved in. I am going to do a giveaway with Joanna from Lilla Rose (they do awesome hair clips called flexis like the ones in the pics above). We're giving away one of the pictures flexis that were designed for Mental Health Awareness month, as well as a charm to go with it, and 17 Lilla bucks (that can be spent on her site like money). I am super excited about this!! I'll give you all more information tomorrow about how to enter. The giveaway winner will be chosen at random at the end of the month. ^_^


Joanna's Lilla Rose:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/UpInHair

Contact Her Directly: https://shop.ami.co/upinhair/contact?ref=share


Research:

CDC Website: https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm#:~:text=Mental%20illnesses%20are%20conditions%20that,others%20and%20function%20each%20day

Mental Health America: https://mhanational.org/mentalhealthfacts

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