Dottie Pacharis

Mental illness is not something people choose. It is not a character flaw. It is a disease like any other disease. It does not discriminate based on age, gender, race, religion or economic status. It affects all segments of society. Although May has been designated as Mental Health Awareness Month, to focus on mental health awareness once a year is an injustice. We are all affected by the health of our brain. There is no health without mental health.

According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, severe mental illness affects 8.8 million Americans and 4.2 million of them are being left untreated. In 44 states, a jail or prison holds more people with severe mental illness than the psychiatric hospitals.

Unfortunately, for the state of Florida, it gets worse. Florida ranks a pitiful 50th in mental health funding, resulting in big problems within its criminal justice system that annually admits about 125,000 people with mental health issues into its jails and prisons. The prison system in Florida has become its largest mental institution.

Our failure to care for the mentally ill comes at a high cost. Mass shootings continue to terrorize Americans. Suicides, gun crimes and mass shootings are many times a product of untreated psychotic individuals. It takes only one deranged person to kill many people. Mentally stable people do not commit mass shootings. They just don’t. Unless we provide treatment for people with severe mental illness before they self-destruct, the preventable tragedies will continue.

Contributing to the mental health crisis, young people across the nation increasingly are reporting rising rates of mental distress amid the coronavirus pandemic. While COVID-19 is a public health crisis, it has created a parallel epidemic involving mental health — especially among younger people. The need for mental health care and awareness has never been greater.

Thankfully, the media has started to spotlight the enormous human and financial toll of mental illness on patients, families, communities and society. This is helping to peel away the stigma and replace it with helpful mental health resources and programs.

One such local resource in Fort Myers is Hope Clubhouse of SW Florida which helps people who have had their lives drastically disrupted by mental illness find hope and rebuild their lives. Hope Clubhouse membership is voluntary, without time limits, and open to anyone over the age of 18 with a history of mental illness. The Clubhouse provides all of its programs and services at no cost to members.

Often diagnosed as children or adolescents, people with a chronic mental illness can spend a lifetime in and out of emergency rooms, jails and psychiatric hospitals. The power of the evidenced-based Clubhouse program is its effectiveness in keeping people out of the hospital, reducing their encounters with law enforcement, and on a continuous path to recovery. By helping these individuals maintain stability and achieve recovery, Hope Clubhouse reduces the economic burden on the community.

It is estimated that there are approximately 81,000 adults in Lee County who have a diagnosed serious mental illness. Due to current space limitations, Hope Clubhouse will never be able to meet the needs of so many people who would benefit from its program without the financial support of the community.

Anyone wishing to learn more about how they can support the expansion plans for building a larger Clubhouse to better serve the growing needs of the community, please contact Erin Broussard at 239-267-1777 or hopeclubhouse.org.

— Dottie Pacharis, Mental Health advocate