Call To Action
Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General devotes an entire chapter to outlining a vision for the future of mental health care in the United States. While the Report identifies eight initiatives toward the realization of this vision, I wish to focus on the one I consider most fundamental and essential—prevention.
The Report, first and foremost, states that the national health care system should base its work on the best available science, thereby preventing disease and promoting good mental and physical health. Therefore, mental health research, especially in the areas of illness prevention and good mental hygiene, is critical to the overall plan for improvement.
Within this vital area of prevention, children who grow up surrounded by complex adult issues such as divorce, drug abuse, mental illness, and emotional and physical trauma often slowly lose their sense of identity and their very childhood. Behind a mask of confidence and self-reliance lie feelings of uncertainty, sadness, and loss; the children know, on some level, that they have missed something, yet don't comprehend the loss of childhood and the feelings it raises as a result.
This trauma, experienced by so many children in this country and throughout the world, has all too often gone unrecognized or ignored by health care providers. The lack of knowledge, understanding, and common experiences among these children has left a void of ignorance and misdiagnosis within the medical system, especially in regard to mental and emotional illnesses.
One cannot have good overall health and well-being without good mental health; the ability to thrive in life depends upon it.
Yet growing up isolated from the knowledge that we are not alone, that experiences in childhood can lead to an erroneous belief that there is something wrong, that pieces of childhood were lost, many of us, as adult children, become part of the health care system that keeps our identity invisible. Alone, we have no idea that we remain isolated and, consequently, misdiagnosed.
In 1993, the first Invisible Children's Project (ICP) began in Orange County, New York. This program aims at identifying children in a family with a mentally ill parent, then providing services and support to ensure a safe and secure home environment. The ultimate objectives are to keep the family together and enable parents to be positive role models for their children.
However, there are many times when a parent does not have a mental illness, but the stress of parenting and adult life becomes so overwhelming that children are not taught right and wrong, the appropriate and inappropriate, and are left alone in a society that sends mixed messages about values and behavior. Where can we turn and how can we guide our children when the health care system labels these children as mentally ill?
In an attempt to respond, schools screen students for depression beginning in preschool, offering referrals to providers who often medicate these children at a very young age. Also, districts across the country have turned to daily all-day kindergarten, insisting this saves taxpayer money and better educates children.
But the cost of providing health care to families with children who need medications or counseling has risen exponentially in recent years. The health care system has become overburdened with delivering services to people who want quick fixes for colds, flu, viruses, and even mental illnesses. Emergency rooms have become outpatient care centers. Hospital wards are full, treating great numbers of patients with heart disease, diabetes, and other major health problems that, in some cases, have been brought on by poor mental health.
Despite the good intentions of the medical system that treats these diseases, one area that remains invisible is that of complementary family involvement. Many advocates for the mentally ill are family members or close friends. Yet all too often families have felt forced to abandon their own family members, because the stress of finding support for themselves, keeping their own lives in check without support, has become so burdensome that they see no other choice. What good are we to others if we cannot care for ourselves?
There have been many times when I wondered whether I had the mental and physical stamina to deal with Millie's illness, the patience to deal with my teenage son's rebellious nature, or the time to finish this book. Every time I wondered if I had the strength, I reminded myself that if I did not write the story, if I did not document these struggles, both I and the many thousands of other adult children would remain as we have always been: invisible.
My goal with the publication of this manuscript is the expansion and strengthening of existing, award-winning programs within the mental health system, e.g., Invisible Children's Project and Weekend Consequential Camp. These programs offer real solutions, prevention, and answers to problems that exist within our society.
Medicine must look within its own structure and facilitate a complementary solution to health care needs that allows for us—family members, neighbors, friends—to ease the load on the overburdened health care system that can not provide us with a quick fix.
We must realize that there are no quick-and-easy answers to the current mental health crisis in the U.S. But we can find solutions that will make a difference in the way we treat our neighbors and ourselves. We must simply find the will to do so.
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