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People with disabilities all have unique lived experiences, but when it comes to their mental health, three people with disabilities told The Forum that members of the disabled community often face additional challenges and barriers that bind them together.

Twelve-year-old Nora Abrams keeps a busy schedule between her writing seminars, coursework and extracurriculars. She dreams of being a biologist and just finished sixth grade at her Fargo middle school.

 Nora was born with a sensory processing condition, her mother Sara Abrams told The Forum, and needed to use mobility aids for several years, as a result of her physical disability, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.”

 For Nora, one of the biggest impacts on her mental health is the behavior of others.

While she has a supportive network of friends, she said, she still faces bullying from her peers and obstacles from her school that stem from her disability.

Some kids tell her she doesn’t “look disabled” and that she shouldn’t be given accommodations.

“It’s pretty hard to see that I have a disability. I have gotten yelled at, teased, because of how I look or what I do. I definitely have gotten called out for using the elevator at my school even though I need to use it,” she said.

Intolerance doesn’t just come from other children, she said, but also from teachers and administrators at her school.

Read more at InForum.com

San Mateo County plans to launch a mental health court this summer aimed at compelling homeless people and others with severe, untreated psychotic disorders into treatment plans and facilities.

The initiative stems from California’s new county-level CARE Court program, spearheaded by Gov. Gavin Newsom as part of a broader overhaul of the state’s mental health system.

This July, San Mateo is set to become the second Bay Area county to start the program, following San Francisco, which in October opened one of California’s first CARE courts. All counties statewide must phase in courts by Dec. 1.

While disability rights advocates worry the program could infringe on people’s personal freedom, officials say the goal is not to force patients into facilities or conservatorships against their will but rather to work with them to achieve voluntary participation.

However, if patients do not comply with their treatment plans, they could be referred to a locked facility or jailed if they have a pending criminal case. Participants cannot be forcibly medicated or jailed solely for refusing care. Treatment plans last one year and could be renewed for a second year.

Read more at MercuryNews.com

Depression, anxiety and other mental health issues are the most common complications during and after pregnancy, affecting an estimated 1 in 5 women. Yet, 75 percent of postpartum problems go untreated. The consequences can be devastating. Suicide and overdoses are leading causes of maternal death in the United States. 

While medical science is focusing more on treating symptoms — the Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first-ever pill specifically aimed at postpartum depression — tough-it-out societal attitudes remain hard to shake. 

For families and kids, finding ways to help new mothers navigate depression is critical but it’s still hard to get people to understand this isn’t just about feeling down for a day or two.

Perinatal mood disorders, like postpartum depression or anxiety, are common and treatable. It’s not just sadness. It can look like excessive worry, irritability or fatigue. 

A 2015 Minnesota Department of Health report found depression and anxiety grip at least 15 percent of new mothers in Minnesota — nearly 30 percent within low-income communities. Even after being diagnosed with postpartum depression or anxiety, about half of moms using public health programs don’t get follow-up care.

Read more at MPRNews.org.

San Luis Valley cattle rancher George Whitten was halfway through a mental health workshop when he let himself tally up a figure he had never wanted to know — the number of people in his life who had died by suicide. 

It was eight. 

“You just sort of file that away in a gray box, a place in your mind that it’s there, but it’s not something you want to revisit,” said Whitten, who is 71 and runs 150 cows on land outside Saguache that has been in his family for 140 years. “There’s still a lot there that I really haven’t unpacked.” 

All eight of those relatives and friends were from the rural, agricultural community, starting with Whitten’s cousin, who died at 18 after he was sent from the family’s ranch to Brigham Young University. The young man was depressed and wanted to come home, but his father told him to stick it out. Then he went missing.

Seven years later, his body was found in a cave next to a pistol.

“For all those seven years,” Whitten said, “we were waiting for him to come driving in.”

The workshop Whitten attended in February was the inaugural Buck the Trend, a therapist-led, two-day session in Mancos for ranchers, farmers and horse people to dig into the mental health struggles. It’s one of the latest ideas — along with new grants for rural counties and at least two pieces of legislation at the state Capitol this session — to address an alarming rise in the suicide rate in ag communities.

Nationally, the suicide rate for people in the agriculture industry is 3.5 times higher than other professions. Farmers and ranchers are dying at higher rates than the general population in Colorado, too, in a state that has one of the highest suicide rates in the country. 

It’s the isolation, the stress of debt and drought and crop-eating pests, and the “cowboy up” mentality that talking about feelings or asking for help is weak. 

Maddy Butcher, a horsewoman, author and founder of Nicker News, created the workshop in the hopes of sparking conversation about a topic that’s hard for many people to talk about, but particularly rural, ranching types. The community is built on isolation and stoicism, on sucking it up when things get hard, she said. And there is a lack of skills “around how to deal with your own well-being or somebody else’s crisis.”

Read more at ColoradoSun.com

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time dedicated to acknowledging the significance of mental health and advocating for support and resources for those in need. Across the country, individuals and communities are coming together to break the stigma surrounding mental health and encourage people to seek help.

Despite growing awareness, many people still struggle to find the right resources and treatment for mental health. The journey to receiving care can be confusing and overwhelming due to limited information on available services, long wait times and geographical barriers.

FindMentalHealthNowKY.org was created by KIPRC as an agent for the Kentucky Department for Public Health in partnership and with funding from with the Kentucky Department for Behavioral Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities, part of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

The new website offers a comprehensive array of mental health services designed to meet the diverse needs of its users. If someone is seeking individual or group counseling, the platform provides curated list of licensed therapists and counselors. For those requiring more intensive care, the site connects users with inpatient treatment facilities and hospitals equipped to handle more complex mental health conditions. The range of options ensures that individuals can find the right level of care, whether dealing with everyday stress or facing more challenging concerns.

Mental Health Awareness Month is a crucial time to bring attention to mental health issues and encourage open discussions. FindMentalHealthNowKY.org helps break down barriers by offering accessible, up-to-date and trustworthy resources. Its extensive resource library of educational materials foster a more open and understanding approach to mental health.

Read more at UKnow.UKY.edu.

For 15 years, Jennifer Alvarado lived in survival mode. She struggled to hold a job, was at risk of homelessness and relied on food banks to feed her family. It was exactly the kind of life she hoped to avoid when she joined the Navy as a 19-year-old single mom.

But after years of intimate partner violence compounded by military sexual trauma, Alvarado felt lost. At times, she found solace in drinking, and during one phase in her life, she considered suicide.

When Alvarado sought help through the Department of Veterans Affairs, she was often left disappointed. She said she was sexually harassed at her local VA clinic and that her benefits claim for depression was denied, though doctors piled on prescriptions.

Among women veterans who use VA care, around 1 in 3 report experiencing military sexual trauma (MST), which refers to a spectrum of sexual harassment, assault or both. Veterans with a history of MST experience a higher prevalence of substance abuse and are at increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, the DAV report shows.

An even more vulnerable time for women veterans is during menopause. According to the report, this period corresponds to the highest rates of suicide in U.S. women.

Usually beginning between ages 45 and 55, menopause comes with fluctuations in hormone production and is often accompanied by a variety of symptoms, including hot flashes, sleep disruption, body aches, weight gain, incontinence and memory problems. Menopause has also been shown to raise the risk for depression in U.S. women twofold, the report notes.

DAV has long been at the forefront of advocating for policy and legislative changes to better serve women veterans, who now represent more than 10% of all veterans. Most recently, DAV helped pass the Protecting Moms Who Served Act to improve maternity care, the Making Advances in Mammography and Medical Options (or MAMMO) for Veterans Act to improve access to mammograms, and the historic provisions from the Deborah Sampson Act aimed at enhancing health care programs and services for women veterans and improving access to care.

Read more at DAV.org.