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According to the Centers of Disease Control, over eight percent of children in the US are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or AD/HD. That’s about 5.3 million of those ages 3-17 years old that have this disorder. In our home state of North Carolina, ten percent of children are diagnosed with ADHD. So what can we do at Carolina Partners in Mental Health to help our community with this epidemic? Some treatments that we can provide are :
- medications
- behavioral intervention strategies
- parent training
Carolina Partners has recently recruited expressive art therapist Allison Grubbs, MSW, LCSW, LCAS to our Wellness Center in Raleigh. Allison will be offering a combination of traditional mental health counseling, mindfulness/meditation and expressive art therapy. Some of our mental health community is not familiar with art therapy, so we’d like to take this opportunity to explain what it is and how it works.
According to the International Art Therapy Organization, art therapy is “a form of expressive therapy that uses art materials, such as paints, chalk and markers. Art therapy combines traditional psychotherapeutic theories and techniques with an understanding of the psychological aspects of the creative process, especially the affective properties of the different art materials.” The National Institute of Health describes art therapy as a “mental health profession that uses the creative process of art-making to improve and enhance the physical, mental and emotional well-being of individuals of all ages”. Art therapy is employed in many clinical settings with diverse populations. It can be found in non-clinical settings as well, such as in art studios and in workshops that focus on creativity development. Art therapists work with children, adolescents, and adults and provide services to individuals, couples, families, groups, and communities.
With the addition of the Carolina Partners Wellness Center and naturopathic doctor, Dr. Kivette Parkes, I wanted to let the Carolina Partners community know what she and the center have to offer. I also want to address some of the stereotypes people think of when they hear the term ‘wellness’ and then answer some questions about what naturopathic medicine really is.
When it comes to mental health issues, it seems that nothing is more stigmatized then self-harming behavior – specifically, cutting. Cutting, known in mental health circles usually as a form of non-suicidal self-injury, is most prevalent in teenagers and young adults. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that one in ten college students will participate in at least 100 episodes of cutting over the course of their lifetimes. Nationwide, estimates are somewhere near three million – that’s three million people who purposely harm themselves without the intent to end their lives. Why?
This past week, somebody I knew from my graduating high school class died of a heroin overdose. As the outpourings of grief and mourning washed over my Facebook page, the bitterness I felt surprised me: I would not remember him fondly, as so many of his “friends” proclaimed they would. I would remember him as the hostile, mean teenager who tormented my friends and me relentlessly during our high school years. The hate I’d always felt for him – the fear, the outrage, both the physical and emotional damage he inflicted – came screaming back, even after all this time. I figured after six years, after countless successes, after all the good I had done and experienced, the love I now knew, I could forgive and forget. Honestly, his name had been lost to me up until that moment. It’s the first time I’ve thought about him in years…
There are no shortages of bullies in schools. Any kid can tell you that. Recent and extensive national coverage on bullying, sparked by an upswing in suicides over the past year, shows that it can come in all forms and from any direction: Home, school, internet. It can happen to any kid, for any number of reasons. It hurts everybody it touches, and it appears to happen to everybody, at one point in their lives. Again, nothing new. “It’s part of growing up.” “It makes you stronger.” Et cetera.
Sheriffs in North Carolina, through the Sheriff’s Association, recently pushed the idea that police should
have access to the computer records of anyone taking prescription painkillers or other controlled
substances in our state. Their rationale is the same old tired refrain: If police can look at these
records, they will be able to make more drug arrests and curb what they call “the growing problem of
prescription drug abuse.”
I have been a student of higher education for six years. Two of those years, I was uninsured. It’s not an uncommon place to find oneself during “Real World Purgatory” – the time between an earned degree and a career. Your entire life is in limbo. For the majority of us, life after our parents’ insurance drops us (at either 19 or 23) is a precarious time. For me, that time was grad school. Cold? Ride it out with some Gatorade. Flu? Pray that it’s not actually meningitis. Slice the tip of your finger off with an X-Acto knife during printmaking? Drive yourself to urgent care where they offer discounted treatment. Do not, under any circumstances, get in the back of an ambulance. I don’t care how much you’re bleeding, that’s a $1,500 cab ride, my friend. And for God’s sake, avoid the combination of inebriation and icy sidewalks. Like so many uninsured college students, I ended up pushing my health aside, hoping my immune system would do what I pay it to do, hoping that the generic Z-Pack my campus’s health center was handing out like candy would work. And hoping, of course, I didn’t fall down a flight of stairs.
CNN and Oprah had an interesting question for the ladies this morning: Are you secretly sad?
The article, found here, goes on to describe a few examples of some women who describe their daily lives as if they were navigating a car with a dirty windshield. It was tolerable, sure, and they were certainly capable of it. Get up, go to work, go home. Do it all over. Sometimes happiness disappeared so gradually, they didn’t even notice. Or, maybe a certain period of stress descended on them like sadness-saturated fog. Not quite as strong as a storm cloud, but enough to dampen what would normally be good feelings. The worst part? A good day for these women was “not feeling really bad.” Maybe they would laugh occasionally. Perhaps even have a bit of fun. Eventually, though, “not feeling really bad” may only be ascertainable via alcohol, drugs, or sex.
It’s not exactly a national secret that about one in four adults suffer from some diagnosable mental disorder or another. That’s almost sixty million adults in the U.S. alone who are seeking (or should be) seeking treatment for a mental disorder. As organizations, the media, and even celebrities work to break down the stigma surrounding mental illness and all of the related, complicated areas – be it race, ethnicity, class and accessibility- CNN brought a new factor to light that is beginning to gain more and more attention and acceptance: Age, and the increasing diagnosis rates of mental illness, specifically mood disorders like bipolar disorder, in children.
I have been working in the mental health field for the entire period of time in which North Carolina has
been “reforming” its public mental health care system. I will continue to put the word “reform” in
quotes because I have come to believe that the only “reform” that has been seriously contemplated
at the highest levels in North Carolina is to seriously reduce the amount of money being paid for
treatment. Period. Without regard for the effects of such on the people of North Carolina who need
help.
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