TALLAHASSEE, FL - May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
Founded by Mental Health America in 1949 to raise awareness about the illness.
While mental health is an illness, it's also considered a crisis in our community.
Meg Young with Capital Regional Medical Center talked with WTXL's Christine Souders about why someone with a mental illness should have it addressed early.
Here's some statistics and helpful advice from Meg Young:
1 out of 5 adults in the U.S. experience a mental illness
1 out of 25 live with a serious mental illness
Depression is the leading cause of disability
People have different symptoms and experience those symptoms very differently.
When we think about cancer, heart disease and diabetes, we don't wait years to treat them. We begin immediately to reverse symptoms.
Addressing mental illness means not burying symptoms and refusing to talk about them and waiting for symptoms to clear up on their own.
When someone first begins to show symptoms – we should act.
Being able to talk about how you feel allows people with mental illness to build support, reduce stigma and discrimination, and is crucial to recovery.
Ignoring the symptoms could mean years before someone seeks help.
Even if we don't intervene right away, we can still act effectively, and offer support for recovery.
Mental illnesses are common and treatable. And help is available.
