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As a society, we have made tremendous strides in reducing the stigma around mental health and encouraging youth and adults to report and seek treatment for mental health concerns, behavioral and substance use disorders. In 2020, approximately 41.4 million adults across the United States sought treatment for mental health counseling within the year, including counseling, inpatient and outpatient treatment, and prescription medication. Despite positive progress, there is still a disparity between who can comfortably seek and access mental health resources. Data from a National Health Interview Survey shows that non-Hispanic white adults (23%) were more likely than non-Hispanic black (13.6%) and Hispanic (12.9%) adults to receive any mental health treatment in their lifetime.

Multicultural considerations in counseling matter; counselors must learn cultural competencies to further diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in mental health.

In recent years, higher education counseling programs are increasingly focused on multicultural considerations in counseling. Education is changing to ensure counselors understand the importance of cultural competencies and learn the historical influences and persisting challenges marginalized groups face in the United States.

Mental health counselors should never use a one-size-fits-all approach to treat clients. Although mental health may feel like a private and personal experience, counselors can only understand mental health from a holistic perspective that considers intermingling factors, including biological predispositions, past trauma, cultural values, and more. Dr. Heidi L. Henry, assistant professor of counselor education at St. Bonaventure University, co-authored an article titled “Religious Identity Development and Multicultural Competence: A Correlational Study of Counseling Students” to explore how religious identity impacts the cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills a counseling student must develop to work with diverse clients.

Read more at SBU.edu.

Autistic women and girls face barriers to early diagnosis, an oversight that leaves them without vital early support and reduced support options as adults. It’s estimated that 80% of autistic women remain undiagnosed at 18, having learnt to conceal, or ‘mask,’ more commonly acknowledged symptoms as children.

This results in many women receiving a diagnosis only after presenting with co-occurring mental health conditions like anxiety or depression, due to intense feelings of difference or stress when navigating a neurotypical world.

Cathy Wassell, CEO of Autistic Girls Network, said: “We are diagnosing people in crisis because we haven’t recognised them as autistic before that.

Lee Gibbons’ work, as operating manager of charity ASD Helping Hands, reflects the important part charities play in plugging this gap.

The charity offers a combination of social groups, training and workshops for parents and employers and well as support navigating diagnostic processes.

When Gibbons began working at the charity in 2010, he exclusively saw children but adult referrals have spiked over the past four years, making up 40% of the charity’s cases.

He emphasised that a lack of support means that diagnosis is never the finishing line.

Gibbons said: “After an initial wave of relief, many people experience self-doubt and questioning. You get offered three to four sessions of therapy, which often raises more unanswered questions… It can be an isolating and lonely experience.”

Read more at SWLondoner.co.uk.

A dual diagnosis involves a mental health disorder and substance abuse problem that occurs simultaneously. For example, an individual with depression is more likely to drink alcohol to self-medicate symptoms of irritability, insomnia and feelings of helplessness. Research also shows that while excessive alcohol consumption does not produce behavioral conditions, drinking can exacerbate the symptoms of a mental illness.

Having a drinking problem or mental illness does not guarantee a person will develop a co-occurring disorder. However, it can significantly increase the likelihood of a dual diagnosis later down the road.

With dual diagnosis, the symptoms of alcoholism and a mental illness often feed off of each other. Because of this, any amount of alcohol will affect a person’s emotional well-being and vice versa. If left untreated, a co-occurring mental illness and alcohol dependency can spiral out of control, taking a toll on both the individual suffering and their loved ones.

There are many mental health conditions that can co-occur with alcohol abuse. Some of the most common conditions include depression, bipolar disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Each mental illness affects alcoholism in a different way, depending on the longevity and severity of the disorder.

Read more at AlcoholRehabGuide.org.

The struggle to find a therapist can be a daunting task, and connecting with someone you feel you can identify with can make it more difficult. Dr. Khadijah Booth Watkins, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Director of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds, said, “More and more people are looking for therapy and we just don’t have the supply to meet the demand.”

She knows it’s not easy for people struggling with their mental health to find help.

“People have waited for years to try to get a therapist that they can find is a match or that takes their insurance. Even here in the city, though, it can be really difficult to find someone who’s specially trained, especially if we think about child and adolescent psychiatry as child and adolescent therapists, they’re very few,” Watkins said.

When talking about therapists of color, especially Black therapists, the search gets even more challenging.

“The numbers are quite disappointing. It’s about 85-90% are not of color therapists, so around 5-6% of therapists are people of color, whether they’re Black or brown. And so that’s pretty big. If we think about what the world that we live in looks like, it doesn’t really quite match. And so it’s really hard for some people to find someone that they think can relate to them,” Watkins said.

Gabrielle Palmer, a mentorship and Leadership Program Administrator with the Center for Workforce Development at William James College said, “There’s something about sitting across a room from someone who knows your experience, who’s been in your shoes, that you don’t have to share all of the unspoken.”

“We have so many pipeline programs that are just for this to increase the accessibility and to really widen the pipeline for folks of color who want to work and in underserved communities or marginalized communities who also identify as a racial ethnic minority. And there is a power of really giving service while also being someone who looks like the ones you give service to,” Palmer said.

That’s where the Black Mental Health Graduate Academy comes in.

Read more are WCVB.com.

A new study is shining light on access to behavioral health care in Ohio. Within the study, it’s noted that “barriers to care are negatively impacted by provider bias, racism, and stigma, which lead to poorer quality of care and worse behavioral health outcomes.”

Tracy Maxwell-Heard, the executive director of the Multi-Ethnic Advocates for Cultural Competence, indicated that the findings are not surprising.

“What we found out are those stigmas, those biases, are just as present in the behavioral health community as in any other sector,” she said. “And our endeavor is to try to quantify that so that we can create some balance and some access, increased access for those from those BIPOC communities…Black Indigenous People of Color who are struggling to find service deliverers who look like them, speak their language, understand their cultural norms and can give them the same equitable service as the rest of the Ohioans.”

When looking at those who are incarcerated, the numbers for mental health treatment differ drastically between Black and white Americans, with white Americans receiving more care. When asked about the difficulties Black people face getting treatment, Heard said that when incarcerated “It just exacerbates your ability to reach whatever services you’re in need of.”

Read more at SpectrumNews.com.

A fitness center exclusively catering to veterans and active military personnel has opened a location in Helena, Montana. Adaptive Performance Center’s (APC) mission is to help military personnel and veterans improve their mental health and wellness through physical exercise and the building of community.

“We have the opportunity to see the life come back into their eyes. And there’s really nothing more amazing than to have somebody walk in the door who’s nervous, who’s not feeling very comfortable, doesn’t make a lot of eye contact, doesn’t interact a lot, and within a month or two months they’re standing at the counter talking to you for an hour when they walk in the door,” says Co-Founder/CEO of APC, Karen Pearson.

Pearson says that she and Co-Founder Mitch Crouse were spurred to action after working alongside a national guard unit that saw multiple deaths by suicide.

“In traditional gyms, those were not places where veterans could really go. When you have loud weights drop and you have all of those kind of things happen, those are not sounds that are conducive to them feeling like they have a place where they feel safe. And so, when you take your walk around the gym today, you’ll notice we have rubber flooring, we have rubber coated weights,” says Pearson.

APC offers personal trainers, peer mentorship, veteran liaison assistance, and physical health and wellness classes.

“Whether they’re struggling with the VA, getting their disability ratings, whether they’re struggling with housing, food, any other thing that you can think of, we, our liaisons can help them with that. We have peer mentors on staff. We have an occupational therapist on staff. So, we can serve veterans from a perspective of everything in their life. It is very much a holistic approach to anything that may be going on in their life,” says Pearson.

Read more at KTVH.com.