By Jaletta Albright Desmond, Davidson LifeLine president
Even though it has been around since 1949, I used to be clueless about May being Mental Health Month. To be honest, I wish I still was.
Basically, every month now is Mental Health Month in my life and in my volunteer work. I am grateful there’s a month where everyone is encouraged to pay attention to their brain health.
It’s not as though I wasn’t aware of mental and behavioral health before my oldest daughter died by suicide in 2012, along with four other Davidson residents. I was paying careful attention to her mental health, her diagnosed low grade depression. But I could’ve educated myself more. I could’ve tried to better understand depression, the teen brain and impulsivity. I had even researched and written a column about suicide a year or two before my daughter took her own life—but I didn’t know then that she was suicidal and I didn’t really know what signs or symptoms to look for. And I didn’t know I needed to know.
It’s tough sometimes to separate typical adolescent behavior from mental illness. It’s tough sometimes to separate typical adult struggles from mental illness.
May is the month to learn more. Below you will find links just a few links where you can explore with experts and national organizations to learn more about mental health and behavioral issues, brain health and suicidal ideation. You can learn about stigma and the damage it does to society when we judge, criticize or avoid mental health. You can learn about resilience and how to grow from the struggles we all face. You can also join Davidson LifeLine online for the evidence-based suicide prevention training QPR (Question-Persuade-Refer). QPR teaches you how to recognize signs and ask a person if they are thinking about suicide, persuade them to get help, and refer them to the appropriate professionals or resources. Particularly right now, life is upended and calls into suicide helplines have climbed so rapidly that some of those individuals working helplines, answering phone calls from people in crisis, are now overwhelmed, facing their own emotional struggles. Let’s do what we can to help those around us, to help ourselves. Let’s take this month to learn more.
I’d be glad for Mental Health Month to become obsolete because we are paying attention to it every month, every day.
https://www.davidsonlifeline.org/event/virtual-qpr-question-persuade-refer-2/
https://mhanational.org/mental-health-month
https://thekennedyforumillinois.org/mentalhealthmonth2020/
https://nami.org/Get-Involved/Awareness-Events/Mental-Health-Month