GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (KSNB) – May is Mental Health Awareness Month, highlighting the importance of seeking help for mental health issues that have long carried a stigma.
Psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner Kylene Schroer said people should seek help when mental health issues impact them and those around them.
“If it’s having a negative impact on you or your family, your loved ones, let us help you make it better so that it’s not impacting someone, whether you or your loved ones negatively,” Schroer said.
New medications show promise
Help sometimes comes in the form of medication. Psychiatrist Sherry Kropatsch said the field of mental health research has surged in recent years, including the rollout of the drug Spravato.
Spravato was approved by the FDA in 2019. Kropatsch said it has had a significant impact on some patients.
“About five months after the approval is when my first patient started treatment. That person is still receiving treatment. Every three weeks, I think, is what that patient is coming in for. It has maintained and kept that patient from being suicidal and going inpatient,” Kropatsch said.
Becky Francis has been taking the drug for about three years. She said it helped improve her mental health.
“I have treatment-resistant depression, and so I was on medications up and down and up and down. I don’t have to do that anymore. There’s no more being high, being low, anything like that. It’s just a nice, calm day,” Francis said.
Francis said she wonders how these advancements would have helped other members of her family.
“I lost a family member to depression, and I am a huge advocate since then because I think if she could have gotten help like I’ve been able to get help, she might still be here,” Francis said.
Breaking the stigma
Kropatsch said one group is especially prone to stigma around mental health.
“Men find it as a weakness, and we really need to. It’s actually very courageous to get the help, and it’s not a weakness or a flaw in you. There is help out there, and it is okay to reach out for help,” Kropatsch said.
She said awareness is improving, but more work remains.
“The awareness and our push for awareness is improving, but it’s still, we still need to be working on that,” Kropatsch said.
As author Charlie Mackesy wrote in “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” “Asking for help isn’t giving up. It’s refusing to give up.”
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