Mental illness is perhaps among the most wrongfully-stigmatized of all conditions, and historically, those afflicted by its various types have been shunned away, if not worse. When untreated, mental illness, like any other, only gets worse. In the United States, we’re recommended to get our teeth cleaned every six months but seldom advised to get our heads checked. The statistics certainly don’t back up this disturbing absence of support.
Studies show that about 25 percent of all U.S. adults are living with a mental illness and that as much as 50 percent of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime. Awareness is widening, but there’s work to be done, particularly in the public health arena, and the city of Philadelphia is stepping up to the plate.
And it’s batting with technology.
HealthyMindsPhilly.com is Philadelphia-website advocating mental health awareness. It screens individuals for mental health problems and offers tips on resources. But the City of Brotherly Love’s outreach doesn’t end there. By the end of the year, it plans to have launched a web-based app with the capacity to deliver behavioral treatment online.
One of the central aims of the app, Arthur Evans Commissioner of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services says is to connect people who might not seek out a therapist to precisely that: a therapist, so something pretty close to it.
Evans is hopeful that in using technology, his department can better address mental health issues across a broad spectrum, instead of just focusing on people in crisis. He adds that five percent of the city’s population has a serious mental illness, while 20 percent suffer from one considered less severe. At present, only half of the latter percent receives treatment of any kind.
