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this does stray into a different topic yet it doesn't the gun problem is normally caused by mentally ill people thats not 100% accurate or exactly true but it is a totally pliable thing.

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Joe Rogan | Mental health problem disguised as gun problem

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I liked this personally because I understand that almost everyone I know deals with an issue by themselves even though they know people are here for them.

Taylor, Monaco “Solving the youth mental health epidemic” Crosswinds, Inc. December 6, 2018

http://www.businesspeople.com/Post/3202/solving-the-youth-mental-health-epidemic

Accessed 2/21/19

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Growing up is hard. It was for our parents, our grandparents and their grandparents. Every generation has its own set of unique hardships. Today's youth, however, have unprecedented challenges that impact their development. Today, these challenges are faced at a younger age than ever before. One alarming issue, not often enough discussed, is the epidemic of mental health issues in our children. Research states that nearly 50 percent of U.S. teens ages 13 to 18 suffer from at least one mental disorder. The most common mental health disorders among today's youth include anxiety, depression, eating disorders and disorders that are linked to trauma.

If a child breaks a bone, you would be hard-pressed to find parents, educators or doctors who would dismiss the injury without seeking evaluation and treatment. But, when a child is hurting in a less obvious way, such as a mental health issue, it is not uncommon for adults to be dismissive or unconcerned rather than addressing, naming and seeking treatment. Children can become withdrawn, plagued with worry, or these issues can manifest in other ways that are, unfortunately, often considered part of childhood or adolescence. Sometimes they are even excused as hormonal.

Less than 35 percent of youth who have mental health issues seek help. These mental illnesses, when left undiagnosed, can become debilitating - even destructive. With untreated mental illness on the rise, it's not surprising that research surveys show 20 percent of Indiana teens have seriously considered suicide.

The first step in solving this epidemic is early intervention and treatment, which can allow for more stable teen years and encourages health and stability as an adult. Early diagnosis is critical, and beginning treatment during childhood can make an enormous difference; emotionally healthy children have a greater capacity to learn. This is why Crosswinds, an organization that provides proactive, preventative care in the form of full-service counseling, launched The 600 Hours Campaign this year to put more counselors in schools across the state of Indiana this school year. Specifically, the campaign seeks to raise funds for 600 hours of counseling in schools across the state.

Through this campaign, Crosswinds is working to provide resources that are readily available to help children and teens who are struggling. Educators and guidance counselors have seen the ever-increasing need for mental health support for students that can't be adequately addressed by educators and school guidance counselors alone. Delivering mental health services in schools can eliminate barriers - transportation, cost, even stigma - by providing services to children where they already are. Offering treatment in the school environment also allows therapists to see first-hand the student's difficulties. They may be feeling threatened, overwhelmed, inadequate or anxious, and having services on-site provides a readily available safe haven of support.

The most important aspect of this in-school approach is that it works. Researchers have found that mental health interventions that are integrated into the regular curriculum were the most effective way to provide help. Crosswinds has already seen incredible success in its existing program.

"Crosswinds' counselors are currently in 12 schools in northeast Indiana and Ohio. Principals have shared with us that the counselors' schedules are filled before they even enter the building. It is clear the need is great and that Crosswinds' counselors are making a difference, so we feel strongly about providing even more students with this type of support this school year," says Brenda Gerber Vincent, chief development officer for Crosswinds, who heads up The 600 Hours Campaign. "We've heard stories of our counselors helping students with suicidal thoughts, violent behavior, anger, depression and fear, and we are so grateful that our counselors are breaking down the wall students can tend to build with educators and parents."

It is crucial that adults - educators, parents, coaches, youth leaders and anyone who has children in their lives - work to recognize when help is needed, and then take it extremely seriously. Because, sometimes, lives depend on it.

Resources, like Crosswinds counseling, are available. The gap is in identifying the struggle, diagnosing the issue and encouraging treatment. It is no longer safe to assume the problem will subside on its own. We need to speak up on behalf of these children and advocate for action. It is our job to ensure that our youth are not losing hope, but choosing to be brave and getting the help they need. FWL

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Solving the Youth Mental Health Epidemic

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Growing up is hard. It was for our parents, our grandparents and their grandparents. Every generation has its own set of unique hardships. Today's youth, however, have unprecedented challenges that impact their development. Today, these challenges are faced at a younger age than ever before.

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its insane how many perscriptions are out for antidepressants and you can see the increase from the 50's till now it is a massive increase.

Reanna, Comiso “Antidepressant shaming is Making the mental health epidemic worse” The Courier December 5, 2018

https://codcourier.org/10439/opinion/antidepressant-shaming-is-worsening-the-mental-health-epidemic/

Accessed 2/21/19

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I have been on antidepressants since I was 18. Some people told me I was too young to take them. Others told me I should not depend on a pill. I was told if I just exercised, ate healthy and thought positively, my state of mind would change. I made an effort to do all of those things already and unsurprisingly, I still had terrible anxiety and depression that interfered with my everyday life. It wasn't until I overcame the negativity I was spewed about antidepressants and took my mental health into my own hands that I began to see a real change in the way I saw life.

Antidepressants, as the name alludes, are a drug used to treat depression. They also can be used to treat other issues, such as anxiety disorders and sleeping problems. The National Center for Health Statistics states that 118 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year in the United States, making them the third most common class of prescribed drugs in the US.

Medication for psychiatric disorders are given a negative connotation, specifically antidepressants. According to NBC, one in six Americans take medication for a mental disorder, most commonly for depression and anxiety. Many people report feeling lower levels of anxiety and depression from taking antidepressants, yet for some reason, they are still demonized.

Despite being one of the most commonly prescribed medications in the US, there is a lot of fear behind taking medication for depression. Scaremongering tactics have been used to keep people from taking antidepressants and psychiatric medications. An emphasis on all possible side effects are used to keep people away from the drugs, as if they are the only prescription drugs available that carry side-effects.

For example, people often fear the "zombie-effect," the feeling of being separated from your surroundings and emotions. People fear the blunting of their emotions and the inability to portray feeling, though side effects like these aren't common for every person taking medication. Painting antidepressants as being soul-sucking doesn't do anyone any favors. Those who struggle with mental illness should be able to treat their disorder just as they would with any other illness.

Like any other medication available, antidepressants have their fair-share of side effects. Depression is a life-threatening illness, relating directly to an increase in suicide rates. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention revealed in a recent study suicide rates have increased 33 percent since 1999. Letting it slip under the rug and feeding the negative stigma will only continue to make things worse.

It is important to note that one side effect of antidepressants is, ironically, suicidal thoughts. This also keeps many people from doing things to better their mental health. While this side effect can be a reality, doctors should give frequent check-ups to their patients and encourage therapy along with the medication. In order to limit this negative side effect that may come up, doctors should keep an eye on their patients to make sure that treatment is working as it should. While antidepressants can help the issues of depression, considering all outcomes and side effects is crucial.

This stigma has lead to about only half of the population living with depression to actually receive any treatment for their illness. Some of the people who may need the help most will never seek it out due to the shame directed toward mental health.

Some of the most harmful effects of this stigma can be seen with teenagers and young adults dealing with depression. While still living with their parents, it can be hard for them to seek out help for their issues without their parents knowing. Some parents are stuck on the old-fashioned idea that depression is just a phase or a weakness that can eventually be overcome, leaving many young people feeling hopeless and trapped by the disease. Doctors should not be able to give teenagers and young adults medication without their parents permission, which leaves parents to make the decision for their children. Instead of worrying about the stigma, parents should understand the ways medication could help their children if they need it and save them from further deterioration of their mental health.

By not allowing young people to receive help for mental health, they run the risk of letting a mental illness become increasingly difficult into adulthood. As they are trying to develop their livelihoods through school and eventually a career, that growth can be hindered by the very real effects of depression and anxiety. Pretending depression doesn't exist won't make it any better. Instead, it will only worsen the growing problem we have in the United States regarding mental health.

Medication is not the answer for everyone, and it should not be the first and only line of defense. But by further instilling the negative stigma behind mental health, the problem will only continue to get worse.

It is time for all stigmas to be left in the past and let a focus on mental health commence, as far too many people are suffering in silence. Those suffering with mental illness deserve the right to shamelessly seek treatment for their struggles without the negative societal opinion keeping them from doing so.

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Antidepressant shaming is worsening the mental health epidemic

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I have been on antidepressants since I was 18. Some people told me I was too young to take them. Others told me I should not depend on a pill. I was told if I just exercised, ate healthy and though...

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this may not correlate directly with depression and mental illness but this is a huge problem because misdiagnoses is happening all the time for adhd which is prescribed aderral which is a highly addictive drug and this stems into mental illness like addiction.

Alexandra, Michel “Development, Mental Illness, and Solutions to Stigma” APS April 2017

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/development-mental-illness-and-solutions-to-stigma

Accessed 2/21/19

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Reducing the stigma associated with mental illness can be every bit as challenging as the basic research, but Stephen P. Hinshaw's trajectory has been to tackle both.

Understanding normative patterns of development should facilitate knowledge about psychopathology, and understanding atypical development should enhance the study of normal development. Right? That's the core idea behind developmental psychopathology, as APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Stephen P. Hinshaw of the University of California, Berkeley, explained in his Award Address delivered at the 2016 APS Annual Convention in Chicago. He has dedicated his career to researching the underlying mechanisms that lead to conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and to using clinical trials to further understand core processes of change. But, as he elaborated, the translation from basic developmental science, cognitive science, and neuroscience to child and adolescent mental disorders is far from smooth. Even more, solutions to reducing the stigma of mental illness may be just as elusive - but just as important - as understanding the biological and contextual underpinnings of these conditions in the first place.

Hinshaw decried the reductionist thinking that still persists in too many corners of the field. The underlying symptom dimensions of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity in ADHD have a heritability of between .75 and .8, higher than the genetic liability for schizophrenia, defying the myth that these patterns are the product of weak personal will or lax parenting. The heritable mechanisms include delayed development of the frontal cortex, deficits in executive functioning and inhibitory control, and reduced levels of intrinsic motivation. But it's also clear that maladaptive parental responses to early disruptions in temperament and behavior fuel continuation of the symptoms and foster escalations of additional impairments. Such is the case even in adoptive families, in which the effects of gene-environment correlation are removed. According to Hinshaw, it's integration, rather than either/or thinking, that's the key with respect to both basic research and clinical efforts.

People with ADHD are at heightened risk for a number of negative outcomes including academic underachievement, increased risk for accidental injury, and peer rejection. Yet incredibly common, Hinshaw says, is "the oft-held contention that ADHD is just a societal excuse for bothersome behavior. If you want to see real ridicule, just look at the op-eds about ADHD in The New York Times [saying] the medications are poison and it's a made-up disorder. You don't see this same kind of discussion about the legitimacy of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] or bipolar illness. There's something about ADHD that's attracting a lot of negative attention - fueling stigma."

Yet some skepticism may be deserved. After all, most ADHD diagnoses are made by a pediatrician (or, for adults, by a general practitioner) during the course of a 10- to 15-minute office visit, often without the use of any evidence-based practices. Accordingly, rates of diagnosis have skyrocketed over the past decade - a 42% increase in youth over the past 10 years. "That's an epidemic," Hinshaw says. "But ADHD is of course not a communicable disease, so what would explain this increase?"

There may be valid reasons, including increased survival of low-birthweight babies and greater recognition of the condition's validity. Though ADHD was once overwhelmingly diagnosed in White, middle-class boys, Hinshaw reports that the disorder is actually an equal-opportunity condition - but the diagnosis is increasing especially rapidly in low-socioeconomic-status minority kids. His research has illuminated how shifts in social and educational funding policy have contributed to the rise of the ADHD epidemic. As US public schools have been incentivized to maintain high standardized test scores, Hinshaw has found associated spikes in ADHD diagnoses, particularly in a state's poorest school districts. In fact, in some states, the test scores of kids labeled as "special ed" (including those of children with an ADHD diagnosis) are excluded from the district's scores, revealing a perverse incentive to diagnose children.

In addition, although medications are clearly evidence-based treatments for symptom relief, it nearly always takes active engagement of parents and teachers through psychosocial interventions to boost academic and social competencies. Again, Hinshaw says, it's not all biology or all context; it's the operation of both in tandem.

Another myth that has stubbornly persisted is that ADHD exists only in boys, though in fact it can have just as much of an impact on girls. After tracking a large cohort of girls carefully diagnosed with ADHD across 16 years, Hinshaw's team found that by age 20, 51% of girls diagnosed with ADHD featuring early impulsivity were involved in moderate to severe levels of nonsuicidal self-harm, and 23% had made a serious suicide attempt. The control group of girls without an ADHD diagnosis had a 19% rate of self-harm and a 6% rate of suicide attempts. Levels of response inhibition, peer victimization, and peer rejection during adolescence partially mediated such predictive associations. Even more, early maltreatment in conjunction with early impulsivity propelled the rate of attempted suicide to around 35%, revealing again the interplay of biological and environmental risk.

"If you think that ADHD is simply a categorical box in [the] DSM, you'd be mistaken," Hinshaw argues. "Rather than static, it's an extremely dynamic set of traits interacting with multiple contextual influences across development."

When it comes to stigma, it would be logical to believe that it should decrease as public knowledge about mental disorders increases, right? Well, not quite.

We have assumed that, as knowledge about the biological, genetic, and environmental mechanisms underlying conditions such as ADHD progresses, the social stigma of mental illness inevitably will decline. But, as more and more research has found, merely educating the public about these mechanisms has failed to erase stigma.

"Is the solution that we just need to call mental illness a brain disease - a disease like any other? Cancer is a disease; so mental illnesses are diseases of the brain, often highly heritable. And if we give this biogenetic ascription - it's an uncontrollable cause - stigma will go down. But this contention is wrong," Hinshaw says. "As it turns out, when you believe that mental illness is caused biogenetically you blame the individual less, but you also believe that he or she will never get better - after all, it's in their genes - and you don't want to be anywhere near that person; that is, social distance magnifies."

Meta-analyses examining mental illness and stigma in the United States have shown that although public knowledge about the underlying causes of mental illness has grown tremendously over the past 50 years, negative perceptions have remained flat or even increased. Hinshaw points out that today more than 3 times as many Americans believe that mental illness is inevitably linked to violence as was the case in 1955. Stigma prompts a lack of funding for mental disorders, a lack of access to care, and the internalization of stigma by people experiencing relevant conditions.

So what can be done to prevent stigma? Contact, rather than factual knowledge, is crucial, Hinshaw says. He has been working with a group called Bring Change 2 Mind to establish high school clubs focused on changing the way young people talk about mental illness.

The Let's Erase Stigma (LETS) clubs meet once a week with a teacher - not a mental health care provider - as the advisor, just like any other school club. This provides kids with a space to talk about mental health topics in a safe, supportive environment. The goal is to foster open discussion about topics like bullying, LGBTQ issues, and what actions can be performed to open up dialogue and normalize conversations about mental health and encourage peer-to-peer learning.

"Attitudes towards gay marriage have changed radically in the last 20 years, mainly because of people under 30," Hinshaw adds. "It's going to be young people turning on their natural empathy and activism to make a big difference."

In a quasiexperimental test, Hinshaw and colleagues found that while a semester of participation in these clubs didn't greatly improve knowledge of symptoms of mental illness, it did reduce social distance and promote positive attitudes toward mental health in general. Hinshaw's team is currently working on a clinical trial in which LETS clubs are randomly assigned to start early or later in the school year to see if this kind of self-help model can decrease social distance and lead to increased antistigma actions.

"It's a moving time for me to be an award winner at APS. I've been a scientist my whole life, because I grew up in a family with a lot of mental illness and a lot of high achievement, often in the same people," Hinshaw says.

Stigma in mental health remains a huge issue: The World Health Organization data show pretty clearly that the burden of mental illness worldwide is increasing rather than decreasing. Suicide is now the leading cause of death for adolescent girls, globally. It's going to take a game-changing group of efforts to address this issue. With the right scientific approaches, however - tests of mediation, multiple levels of analysis, experimental trials when possible, global Big Data analyses - and a public and government motivated to change, we might actually reduce the burden of mental illness, Hinshaw concludes.
-Alexandra Michel

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Development, Mental Illness, and Solutions to Stigma

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Reducing the stigma associated with mental illness can be every bit as challenging as the basic research, but Stephen P. Hinshaw's trajectory has been to tackle both. Understanding normative patterns of development should facilitate knowledge about psychopathology, and understanding atypical development should enhance the study of normal development. Right?

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I agree with this whole heartedly if you can put your mind on something creative it makes it to were you don't sit in your own thoughts which is what tears a person up from the inside

Smitha, Bhandari “For Depression Relief, Creativity is Key” WebMD December 9, 2017

https://www.webmd.com/depression/depression-creative-outlets

Accessed 2/21/19

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When something's on your mind, chances are you'll feel better when you get it out. All the more so if you're recovering from depression. You'll find you have a better handle on your emotions if you get the creative juices flowing through art, writing, music, or a favorite hobby.

Don't worry if you never thought of yourself as an artistic person. The idea isn't to come up with a masterpiece, and you don't have to show your work to anyone if you don't want to. Just expressing yourself -- and creating something original out of your feelings or mood -- can be satisfying in itself. Some therapists use artistic expression as a way to facilitate therapy.

It's not hard to get started. Pick up an old hobby or look for a new one. Try one of these tips:

Write. Type or pen your thoughts about upsetting events in your life, because that can help you deal with your emotions about them, research shows. For example, studies show that writing about traumatic experiences -- for just 15 minutes a day for 3 days -- leaves people feeling better. You can show what you've written to family, trusted friends, or your therapist if you want. But you can also keep it private.

Sketch. Pick up an art pad and some colored pencils. Then head to your favorite scenic spot -- or even a local art gallery -- and draw what you see.

Paint. Get a set of watercolors or acrylic paints, an art pad, and some brushes. You can make your art at the kitchen table or set up a basic studio somewhere else in your home.

Play music. If you used to play an instrument, now might be a good time to take it up again. Or you can try something new. Sign up for those guitar lessons you always dreamed of.

Take photos. Dust off your camera and snap pics of whatever you like. You might enjoy tinkering with photo editing software, too, if you have the right gear.

Make a movie. Use a video camera or your smartphone. Your kids, your pet, or any subject you like can be the star. You can make things up as you go or write a script to follow.

Try other hobbies. Take up needlepoint or knitting. Crochet a sweater. Make a quilt. There are so many ways to explore your creative side.

There's no need to feel shy or embarrassed when you're trying to be creative. The result doesn't matter. Push past your doubts and give artistic expression a shot. You may find that you enjoy it more than you expected.

Sources

SOURCES:

Bourne, E. The Anxiety & Phobia Work Book, Third Edition, New Harbinger Publications, 2000.

Pennebaker J.W. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1999.

The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.

The American Art Therapy Association.

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Creative Outlets for Recovery from Depression

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When something's on your mind, chances are you'll feel better when you get it out. All the more so if you're recovering from depression. You'll find you have a better handle on your emotions if you get the creative juices flowing through art, writing, music, or a favorite hobby.

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if people are more educated about what they are going through it makes it easeier to deal with it instead of only have your information come from your doctor.

Laura, Greenstein “9 Ways to Stop Mental Health Stigma” National Alliance on Mental Illness NAMI October 11, 2017

https://www.nami.org/blogs/nami-blog/october-2017/9-ways-to-fight-mental-health-stigma

Accessed 2/21/2019

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Every day, in every possible way, we need to stand up to stigma. If you're not sure how, here are some ways our Facebook community responded to the question: "How do you fight stigma?"