May is Mental Health Month: We’re all due for a check up
Suzy Blackhurst, suzyb@estesvalleyvoice
It doesn’t really matter what year the calendar proclaims. When the arithmetic results in 60-something, you know you can handle this. After all, you’ve done it many times during the past four-plus decades on your own. Before that, someone else always helped.
In the past you grabbed your mental umbrella and moved away from the rain cloud lurking overhead. Maybe you got a new job. Found a trowel in the garage and planted brightly colored flowers. Took the kids to the park or the pool so they’d use all their pent-up energy. Maybe you did anything but think about that darkness that kept hanging around.
Now, everything seems different – just “off.” Club meetings with old-time friends are annoying. Books with topics that used to be thrilling are dullsville. And shopping? Everything looks the same as what you already own and don’t particularly care for, and walking store-to-store for 50 more feet makes your feet ache just to think about. You need to make a grocery run because the grown kids are coming, bringing their 100-pound dog to your 1,500-square-foot home, and you have to think of another weekend of vegan meals that only one person will eat.
Exhausted. That’s the right word. Life has become a merry-go-round and some idiot is pushing the bar too fast and too long. You just want to get off. Yesterday. No, it was at least three weeks ago when everything seemed to go haywire!
Now, ask yourself: If you’ve experienced dizziness and have fallen every day for three weeks, would you ignore the symptoms, or would you high-tail it to your doctor’s office to see what might be happening?
This is not a woman’s issue. The female gender might be more willing to talk about what’s bothering them, but men are just as likely to experience darkness. Not only that, but in 2023, more than half the suicides in Larimer County were committed by men. Nearly one-fifth of all Coloradoans suffer from depression.
Help really is readily available here. Almost every health care provider in Estes Park and Northern Colorado has what are called Behavioral Health providers. Of the three clinics in Estes Park, two – Timberline Medical and Salud – have in-house specialists. Furthermore, in Colorado, UC Health primary care clinics, Banner Health, Kaiser Permanente, Centura Health, and others are committed to assisting patients.
Just as with other medical care, there might be some cost involved, but for those of Medicare age, assistance is available as Medicare covers many mental health issues under Part D. Just review the information from Medicare.gov. Other health plans also provide coverage. AARP’s Mental Health Center has a comprehensive section on its website that describes particulars about types of symptoms, all that can significantly benefit from receiving help of one variety or another.
Even though stigma around mental health illness still exists, mostly because of the film industry’s overwhelming depictions of salacious, aggressive, demeaning, violent, and bizarre behaviors, mental health help is just as important at your physical health. It affects not just you, but it can have lasting impacts on your family for multiple generations. Scholarly research has documented what I know first-hand.
I grew up with tales and personal experience with a woman, who in the 1930s, let anxiety overtake her life. She obsessed about so much, like dirt that filtered through not-so-tight windows, and unannounced “guests” that were common in a home built near the railroad track. When her husband was away and hobos knocked on the back door, she hid and made her 10-year-old daughter deal with the “boogie men” begging for food. Eventually she became afraid of nearly everyone, isolated herself in her mind, was angry every time I remember seeing her (until high school years, mostly I hid), and only exhibited depression.
Traces of her issues, some generated by life issues, chronic medical conditions, and loneliness due to isolation created by living for years on the prairie miles from the nearest town and later on in a skilled nursing home, combined with some unknown genetic factor, have surfaced in generations, both male and female: children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Please, don’t just try to wish your sadness away. Don’t go to your medicine cabinet to see if you might have some home remedy already on hand. And for goodness sake, don’t just take another nap. Help yourself and help your family and family members who you may never meet because they aren’t born yet. In Estes Park it doesn’t take weeks to get an appointment. Just call.
I am continually reminded of how fortunate I am to live in this century because of the massive evolutions made in treating mental issues. I’m only sad that my grandmother never got the chance to be happy like those of us who have followed her.
Need some direction? Call SummitStone Health Partners in Fort Collins ANY TIME, day or night, and you will be connected immediately with someone who can help you identify the best next steps based on your situation. Call 970-494-4200 ext. 4.