News Photo by Mike Gonzalez Rebecca Duhaime, executive assistant for the Northeast Michigan Regional Mental Health Authority, works at her desk Friday with a mental health movement cup nearby as she prepares for an event. The Northeast Michigan Community Mental Health Authority is marking May as Mental Health Awareness Month by holding multiple events at various locations.
ALPENA — The Northeast Michigan Community Mental Health Authority is marking May as Mental Health Awareness Month by hosting multiple events at various locations, including mental health drives and blood drives, something the nation has been doing since 1949. The National newspaper reported. Alliance on Mental Illness.
Mary Crittenden, Chief Operations Officer for the Department of Mental Health He said it started internally.
“Our staff are so dedicated to their jobs that they often don’t take the time to stop and really consider the impact they have on the lives they serve,” Crittenden said. said. “Nena is very good at helping them stop and understand how powerful our work is.”
According to the Department of Mental Health’s annual report, which oversees results from the beginning of October 2022 to the end of September 2023, 2,249 people received services from the organization, which also generated more than $40 million in revenue.
Throughout the month of May, the Department of Mental Health will be sending adult psychiatrist Dr. Lisa Spurlock and clinical director Erin Fletcher to locations such as Alcona Health Center and Alpena Public Schools to raise mental health awareness in the community. , informing local residents about the department’s activities. Mental health and crisis services and a service called myStrength will be provided.
“They will talk about our crisis response services, other service provisions, and myStrength,” Crittenden said. “MyStrength is a website/app that we purchased many years ago for the communities we serve, and is a free, confidential resource available to anyone in the counties we serve. It’s all evidence-based, so if you want to tackle anxiety, the modules are only a few minutes long and include a variety of exercises.
The final two events held by the Department of Mental Health are a blood drive with the Michigan Varsity Blood Center on May 29 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the APlex and the second annual blood drive on May 18. This is the next mental health movement event.
The Mental Health Movement event, which only had a 5km route last year, will now be adding 2km and 10km routes as a way to more inclusively engage all levels of ability.
Rebecca Duhaime, executive assistant for the Department of Mental Health, said that even though there were fewer routes last year, there was an overwhelming number of participants than the organization expected.
“We had over 200 attendees that day, but we’ve always said we wanted to go up to 100,” Duhaime said in a previous report by the News. “So the fact that we reached 200 was amazing. Thanks to the overwhelming support we received from the community, we wanted to bring everyone together to fight the stigma of mental illness and we decided to take other routes. We expanded the race to accommodate.”
Children 11 and under can register for the race for free, but older participants must pay a per-person entry fee. Registrations are currently open until May 16th and are priced at $30. To register, visit www.nemcmh.org, the authority’s Facebook event page, or runsignup.com.
“Mental health is important,” Crittenden said. “It is a part of each of us and, according to the Mental Illness Association, the average time between onset of mental health symptoms and treatment is 11 years. We want to work to shorten this time. We believe that it is very alarming that individuals can suffer for as long as 11 years to varying degrees before receiving treatment, and for others it may be longer. Because we know that. At our organization, we believe that mental health is as important as physical health because it affects every aspect of our lives.”
