PRESQUE ISLE, Maine (WAGM) – According to Mental Health America, over 1/5th of all Americans, over 50 million people experience mental health issues on average each year. In recognition of Mental Health Awareness month, Brian Bouchard takes us back to the 80′s to discuss the state of mental health in this week’s Throwback Thursday.
It’s easy to look at the youth of today and dismiss our modern mental health crisis as a new problem. The reality of the situation is that generations coming of age today, are facing many of the same problems as their predecessors were over 40 years ago. In this week’s Throwback Thursday we dial the time machine back to 1985 where WAGM reporter Lee Engelhardt looks at how the county’s baby boomer population coped with the realities of their time.
Counselors at the Aroostook Mental Health Center say they’re not surprised the baby boomer generation is in need of help.
“Just generally, that group tends to have a higher incidence of substance abuse problems. They tend to be more mobile, so they move around the country much more frequently. They tend to avail themselves of mental health services less readily, so they might engage in one treatment for a short period of time around the crisis situation and then leave and go to another location. So they’re very mobile.” says Rick Forbes – Counselor, AMHC
The bad news is that transient people generally don’t have transient problems, Forbes says. They usually require extended treatment.
“This population that’s oftentimes referred to as young chronic adult clients or patients are characterized by having psychiatric disorders that are generally fairly persistent and severe, last over a period of years affect people’s ability to function socially, recreationally, vocationally, etcetera.”
Forbes says Aroostook county is lucky there hasn’t been a significant increase in the mental health case load here over the last few years. No place, however, is completely removed from the fast pace of the 80s.
“You know, drugs are just more available, they’re less frowned upon to some extent from the where in years past, so that you would expect that this group, like any other group of people in the country, would have a higher incidence of substance abuse than they might have in the past.”
Lee Engelhardt, News Line 8.
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