Mental Wellness vs. Mental Illness

Positive vs. negative, but can the system handle it?

I think mental health is on a continuum, and every one of us fits on it somewhere. This is one of those topics where we talk in divisions and categories, but in reality, the lines are not that concrete. The lines are helpful to discuss issues with each other but in real life? It can be very hard to distinguish between them.

I am in private practice. Most of the time, my clients consist of people like me. I am functioning, capable, and relatively healthy. I struggle with depression, but overall I manage well. I see a counselor and plan to for the remainder of my life. I don’t always NEED counseling, but I benefit from it. I like having someone to bounce things off of.

My clients are generally in the same “category” — they don’t necessarily NEED counseling to function, but choose it because it is helpful.

Oddly enough, I had never thought of a simpler way to express that idea but recently I was meeting with a UB student. There are med students who have the option to choose an elective called “Spirituality and Health” or something like that. These students meet one on one with several key people in our community to get several different perspectives on how spirituality affects our health. I am one of the panelists the students see. Recently I was meeting with one rather delightful student who happened to want to go into psychiatry. It was a double connection with me, being in the mental health field.

Anyhow, she said she had read about the term “mental wellness.” She’s a good student so she wanted me to be sure and say she didn’t get credit for coming up with the term herself. I loved it. That’s it.

People like me are pursuing MENTAL WELLNESS. People like me are helping other people pursue mental wellness.

I got an extremely huge education this week about mental illness. I spoke with some higher-ups and got a big clarification about hospitals like ECMC and what their goals and purposes are. The statistics I got were staggering. The amount of people a facility evaluates and the amount of patients that are actually admitted presents an incredibly huge gap. The hospital is only equipped to see the very sickest of the sickest. They just can’t meet the needs that the larger majority of people in need represent. My question is, then where do we tell our clients to go?

There isn’t a good answer. I am currently looking into some partial programs to educate myself further. It’s a huge problem. It’s what I encountered last year with my daughter. It’s what I encountered last week with my client. It’s what virtually all of my colleagues struggle with.

What is there for those people who don’t fit into the “mental wellness” category? They really aren’t functioning well. Counseling and outpatient psychiatry isn’t enough. But they aren’t completely mentally ill either. They aren’t talking about aliens in their stomachs or wielding dangerous weapons around and a serious threat 98% of the time. There just isn’t much in place for them. There just isn’t. And it’s heart-breaking.

I feel like I’m watching a disaster in the making.

Worst case scenario is people continue to worsen and end up being in the “sickest of the sickest” category. Perhaps it could be prevented if they would get the proper help. Best case scenario is they don’t worsen but live a life with almost zero quality. That pretty much sucks too.

Not sure what the answer is. I do know I will keep looking and fighting and arguing and trying. It’s time-consuming and non-rewarding most of the time, but I know of no other way.

So if you are one of those support people in my life, be patient when I need to talk and vent and talk and vent. You need someone to put a pillow on the wall sometimes when you are banging your head into it. But I would rather do that than give up or become so disenchanted or jaded that I just give up. My daughter deserves better than that. So does my client.