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Mental health gets overdue attention

The Franklin Press - 8/4/2017

It's no surprise that rural communities like ours struggle to meet the behavioral health needs of residents. As we've learned in recent months, bringing and keeping adequate health care services is an ongoing challenge.

The situation is even more bleak for people struggling with mental health issues.

Rural suicide rates for both men and women are nearly double those of urban areas, according to the American Psychological Association.

The harm done by a lack of mental health resources is compounded by other rural challenges: higher poverty rates, rampant drug abuse and less access to primary health care.

Sadly, the enduring stigma of mental illnesses keeps many people from seeking the help they need, despite statistics that show 6.7 percent of adults suffer from depression. The stigma is especially paralyzing in a small town where people may worry about having friends and neighbors see their car in the parking lot of a behavioral health center.

There was good news on that front recently when the Evergreen Foundation in Waynesville awarded $489,537 to Western North Carolina organizations, including $54,890 to Macon County Public Health to hire a full-time clinician dedicated to behavioral health.

That doesn't sound like much, and it's just one position, but it's a desperately needed step in the right direction.

Substance abuse falls under the umbrella of mental illness, with one often leading to the other and trapping victims in a nightmarish and destructive cycle.

The crisis manifests itself in all segments of society, but it is perhaps most critical in our prisons and jails.

About 24 percent of inmates in jails suffer from at least one symptom of a psychotic disorder, and 60 percent have at least one symptom of a mental health disorder, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center.

How bad is it? Jails and prisons are sometimes called "the new asylums," because that's where so many of the mentally ill end up.

Those numbers are shocking, but they are probably no surprise to law enforcement personnel and justice officials.

The Macon County Sheriff's Office recently partnered with Appalachian Community Services in a program to help local inmates change the life choices that led them to drug abuse and ultimately to jail.

We applaud the sheriff's office for that effort, and we are grateful to the Evergreen Foundation for writing the checks.

But money is only part of the solution. It is up to all of us, as members of this community, to work to remove the stigma we have so long attached to mental illness and drug abuse. Only then will those of us suffering, in silence or in jail, be able to right ourselves.