The National Alliance on Mental Illness celebrates the first week of October as Mental Illness Awareness Month. About 1 in 4 adults experience mental illness in a year, and 1 in 17 adults lives with a serious mental illness. Some common symptoms to pay attention to for yourself or people you care about are:
- Excessive emotions (worry, fear, sadness) including extreme mood swings
- Changes in sleeping, eating, or sexual habits
- Difficulty perceiving reality, or changes in one’s own feelings, thoughts, or personality
- Multiple physical ailments with no apparent cause (headaches, stomachaches, etc)
- Thinking about suicide
- Inability to complete daily tasks, or handle daily stress and emotion
For more information, and specifics on different mental health concerns, a wealth of resources is available at https://www.nami.org/. There are also mental health services at places like the Diana Baldwin Mental Health Center, PHMC Health Connection, The Family Practice and Counseling Network, and other Federally Qualified Health Centers around the city.
CALL THE NAMI HELPLINE: 800-950-NAMI
FIND HELP IN A CRISIS OR TEXT “NAMI” TO 741-741
