Just in time for the holidays, the Surgeon General released a report on America’s mental health crisis. What’s supposed to be a time of joyous gift giving and family get-togethers, is often underlined with the stress of increased spending and enduring varying degrees of family dysfunction.

“Depression can get significantly worse during the holidays,” says Gary Cohen, a psychologist at the Riverside Day Treatment Program in Newton, MA. “Holiday times can bring up issues of loss, also the expectations around holiday time can be very significant, because people are expected, they think they are expected to have a good time, to have wonderful families, everything’s going to be great, but actually as families get together, very often there are certain tensions and dynamics that take place which can be very upsetting, can increase anxiety, and increase depression.”

According to the Surgeon General’s report, one in five Americans suffer from a mental disorder each year, with two-thirds of those people neglecting to seek help out of either ignorance or shame.

Lynda Weitz is an Art Therapist from Norton, MA who helps people express their emotions creatively.

“I was thrilled to hear the Surgeon General speak on it,” Weitz said. “There’s a lot of shame around it (depression) because it is something that people say that this will never happen to me, but then if it does happen to them they blame themselves, ‘What did I do?’ They take it as a character flaw, it’s a moral call, when really it’s a disease, an illness like any other illness.”

And while getting over the stigma of seeking help may be difficult, paying for that help is even harder. Most insurance companies limit the number of visits to a mental health specialist to just a handful, forcing the patient to pay out-of-pocket if they want to continue therapy.

“We wouldn’t think about not paying for diabetes treatment,” Weitz said, “But we may not pay for your depression.”

Unlike a heart transplant which has a beginning, a middle, and an end, insurance companies view mental illness as an unpredictable drain on company coffers, since therapy can take years with little or no tangible results to show. As a result, people with mental disorders are twice as likely to be denied insurance coverage. This lack of funds makes it difficult for patients as well as providers.

“Most of the staff have taken pay cuts,” says Barbara Dallin, the Program Director at the Riverside Day Treatment Program. “Most people here have not had raises in many years, and we have all Masters or above level educations.”

Add to that a poor public conception of how mental illness is treated.

As Gary Cohen explains, “What people are misinformed about is that they think that mental illness, ‘If you’re depressed you take a pill and then you’re cured,’ but of course it doesn’t usually work that way. Anti-depression generic medication has been a big advantage in the treatment of depression, however, it (also) requires ongoing therapy. There are many aspects to treating mental illness, it’s not just a question of taking a pill. It’s different than physical illness where for many illnesses you can just ‘Take a pill,’ an antibiotic — there is no antibiotic for mental illness.”

It’s the staff’s hope that public awareness about mental illness issues and the services available will rise as a result of the Surgeon General’s report. Maybe then, society will decrease the stigma and increase the treatment.

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