With Mental Health Awareness Month ending in May, two local experts in Highlands sat down with The Highlander and explained why awareness is so important in the community.
Licensed counselor Anne Koenig with the Counseling and Psychotherapy Center of Highlands is encouraging people to have open conversations about their mental health.
“I like to say it’s mind, body and spirit,” said Koenig. “I was raised on a farm, and I had to milk cows and I had a three-legged stool. One of the pegs in the stool was broken and it was scary. So, it’s a metaphor, if you will, for mental health. You can be in the best of physical health. Your mind can be pretty together, but if your spirit is ragged, you’re not going to prop up well. Sooner or later trouble will reveal itself.”
Koenig said having conversations about mental health is extremely important to not only helping others understand what life is like for others living with mental illness, but also dealing with personal concerns, especially in the face of tragedy.
“Every time there is another shooting, the issue of gun control comes up,” Koenig said. “I think that’s just a symptom of a much bigger problem. We don’t have places for teenagers to go to be diagnosed. There’s just no facility for them to go to if they’re having problems. And that’s just true, kind of all the way around for mental health. You see homeless people that really have psychosis or they’re schizophrenic, and they’re just out on the streets because there’s no money for them. They can’t work. They can’t hold a job.”
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund said the misconceptions and stigmas surrounding mental health can negatively affect the way that people discuss it.
Common misconceptions include people struggling with their mental health are just seeking attention, that they are lazy, or they are weak. However, as society continues to grow more progressive the way that people talk about mental health care is changing.
“That’s changing, especially with young people,” Koenig said. “They’re like, proud of it. They just talk routinely about what they’re doing in therapy. They don’t have any shame about it at all. It’s the older ones, especially the seniors, I’m concerned about after COVID. We’ve had effects from COVID too, and they’re less likely to seek the help they might need.”
While the ways in which younger generations discuss their mental health may be changing, so too are the things that negatively affect it.
“Hands down social media is by far the most destructive thing I’ve ever seen with adolescents in high school and college,” Koenig said. “The other thing, I think, is parents have the ‘all hate, all the time’ channels on. Just hatred and vitriolic talk.”
In addition to the grip that social media and intense political polarization has on Americans today, the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have also taken a toll on mental health across the nation.
“You know, we’ve just come out of a worldwide pandemic, and you cannot not experience some sort of grief,” Koenig said. “Everybody has lost and a lot of us had to adapt. We had to figure out new ways of being in our lives, it didn’t matter what your age. And a lot of people have not adapted, they’re stuck in a grief mode. It looks really angry too.”
Koenig suggests that people reflect on how they have adapted to post-COVID life and whether they are happy with their mental state.
“I would encourage people to ask themselves how well they are adapting to life,” Koenig said. “Are they adapting post COVID? And if not, talk to a clergy or go seek out a counselor to talk to your friend or do something but talk about it and look for ways that you can become more adaptable.”
For anyone who wishes to speak with a mental health professional, resources are available online and in the Highlands area.
“In Highlands, they can try the Counseling Center,” Koenig said. “And the other thing I would recommend is that they check with Psychology Today. All they have to do is put in a zip code and they can peruse through different counselors, and they can look for somebody that might be a fit for them.”
Rachel Kelley, ARNP, PMHNP-BC, with Highlands Psychiatry, also works with patients in Highlands.
“I am an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner, Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and Nationally Board Certified in that specialty,” Kelley said. “I work very much as a psychiatrist in that I am licensed to evaluate, diagnose and prescribe the appropriate psychiatric medications for the patients I treat, and regularly monitor my patient’s progress. In addition, I am professionally trained and practice psychotherapy, either solely or in conjunction with psychotropic medication management. I can treat a variety of psychiatric or mental illnesses. Patients I treat range in age from 13 years old to 88 years old and come from all walks of life.”
Kelley said that mental health is in its own category when it comes to overall wellness.
“Mental health is different from physical health, spiritual health; it’s a specific type of health that deals with peoples’ emotions and feelings, including psychiatric disorders,” Kelley said. “It is very broad. There is a variation of things that can cause mental illness. Many mental health diseases can be inherited, but there are several things that can cause mental illness when it comes to our upbringing. It’s like that whole nature vs. nurture debate. Sometimes neither of those boxes can be checked and a person can still develop mental illness.”
When it comes to treating mental illness, Kelley said she always references the spokes of the wheel.
“Medication could be very significant in treating mental illness, and therapy, as well,” Kelley said. “Within those therapies, there are many, many different types that people can narrow down to their specific needs. But, when it comes to the spokes of the wheel, it does not come down to just medication, or therapy, you have to have healthy habits, such as regular exercise, good nutrition, good sleep and even adequate hydration. Other spokes of the wheel would be practicing coping skills, managing their feelings, changing environment, meditation or yoga, those are excellent things we can put into place to better our mental health.”
Throughout her years practicing in mental health, Kelley said there is still a stigma about the subject.
“I believe that mental health is still being pushed to the side,” Kelley said. “Mental health needs are intensifying, they are growing rapidly and it’s not only in the number, but the acuity of who I’m seeing has raised drastically. So, we need to do everything we can to recognize, this is something not just to read about in the paper as a statistic. This is here. This is in Western North Carolina. No socioeconomic line is spared. People have this stigma about it, which in turn makes people not talk about it.”
With social media coming on the scene in the past two decades, Kelley said she believes it is the worst thing for young peoples’ mental health.
“I absolutely believe that the introduction of social media has effected the mental health of young people in the nation,” Kelley said. “There is a developmental task that is identity vs. confusion. In their finding their identity, they are reaching out to who knows what on the other side of social media. The access to everything at your fingertips is not good. With my teenagers, I ask where they learn things. Where did they learn to self-harm, where did they learn about eating disorders or anxiety and they tell me Tik-Tok. The access to learn about how to have these disorders is so readily available and I think that they are grasping for something to identify with.”
Identifying if family or friends are going through a mental health problem is one thing that Kelley said is very important.
“A lot of times, the person who is suffering from the mental illness may not know or may have that stigma not to seek out their own help,” Kelley said. “I have had many family members reach out to me to find out more about mental illness and what they can do to help. As a family or friend, you could read about NAMI, which is a great resource for people. If they just need to talk, they are available and provide more resources than any other organization that I know of.”
To learn more about other available resources or to learn more about the Counseling and Psychotherapy Center of Highlands, visit counseling-center.org or call their office at 864-481-0598. To learn more about Highlands Psychiatry, visit highlandspsychiatry.com or call Kelley at 828-526-3241.
- By Christopher Lugo and Kaylee Cook