Counseling Clinic | Mental Health Charlotte

Jan

NAMI goes virtual, addresses ‘epidemic within the pandemic’

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has, like other organizations, had to contend with a lot regarding COVID-19 and the delivery of its educational programming, according to its CEO. “People fail to realize that we have an epidemic within the pandemic,” Daniel H. Gillison Jr. told MHW. A “ripple of mental health issues” has been exacerbated. Racial trauma and economic issues have created fear and uncertainty, he said. One goal next year will be to increase the number of NAMI volunteers and expand its hours, possibly to 8 p.m., he said. NAMI's annual conference, NAMICon 2020, also went virtual. The organization successfully dealt with bandwidth challenges. “The upside is we had 12,000 participants with representation from the domestic U.S. and 31 countries,” he said. In the past, participants usually numbered from 1,400 to 1,600, Gillison said. Gillison indicated that COVID-19 saw more people being open and discussing mental health. “It helped to create a safe space for many,” he said. “You've seen all sectors — private, not-for-profit, entertainment, athletes, political — having a lot more conversation about the importance of mental health. The isolation has created that conversation.”

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Jan

Video Segment on Alternates to Police Response for Mental Health Crisis Situations [picked-up across the U.S. by local CBS News Stations]

Angela Kimball, national director of advocacy and public policy at NAMI discusses that people are starting to rethink a police response to mental health crises. “We took the concept of defunding police to really be more about investing in community resources that really works to divert people from law enforcement involvement so talking about things like crisis hotlines and mobile crisis response,” said Kimball .

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Dec

COVID-19 is taking a heavy toll in America’s mental health-care deserts

Although the pandemic boosted virtual telemedicine and efforts to normalize the conversation around seeking help for mental health concerns, this progress has not addressed the root crisis: There aren’t enough mental health-care workers to treat everyone in need. That scarcity isn’t something the nation can solve overnight. “It takes eight years to make a social worker,” says Ken Duckworth, CMO for NAMI. Practitioners ranging from rural clinics to larger nonprofits like the National Alliance on Mental Illness had to up their services. “Isolation is hard on people,” Duckworth says. “Uncertainty is hard on people. Winter can be hard on people. People are in distress, and they’re having clinically significant experiences.” “It has become much more ordinary to seek help for mental health,” Duckworth says. “Going forward, people with mental health concerns may not be considered the other.” The National Alliance on Mental Illness’s helpline has seen an increase in calls. At the onset of the pandemic, the number of people phoning them tripled. This volume has waxed and waned with outbreaks and other tumultuous events this year, such as the presidential election, the continued perpetuation of violent white nationalism, and the social movements toward equality. NAMI has recruited additional volunteers to handle the uptick. Teletherapy and phone sessions have closed the distance between providers and their rural patients, but this new connectivity is far from a cure-all, Duckworth says.

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NAMI goes virtual, addresses ‘epidemic within the pandemic’

Video Segment on Alternates to Police Response for Mental Health Crisis Situations [picked-up across the U.S. by local CBS News Stations]

COVID-19 is taking a heavy toll in America’s mental health-care deserts

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