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North Berkshire Advocates Rally for Mental Health Awareness
By Tammy Daniels, iBerkshires Staff
10:15PM / Thursday, May 07, 2015
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Mayor Richard Alcombright joined the rally.


Some two dozen community members and advocates stood in front of City Hall for a rally to raise awareness children's mental health needs.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Advocates for children with mental health issues are calling for greater awareness of the need for treatment and education.

"Parents need to be educated, teachers need to be educated with how to deal with children with mental health issues," Cathy Felix said, holding a sign up to honking cars outside City Hall. "If they don't understand it, they don't know what to do."

This week is Children's Mental Health Awareness Week and the Northern Berkshire Systems of Care Committee has been trying to get out the message to those with family members with mental illness that they are not alone.

Mayor Richard Alcombright, a committee member, last week read a proclamation designating this as Children's Mental Health Awareness Week; iBerkshires.com, The Berkshire Eagle and WNAW have been running public service announcements on the issue. The town of Adams accepted a similar proclamation on Wednesday.

On Thursday afternoon, more than two dozen adults and children lined the sidewalk outside City Hall holding signs declaring "You Are Not Alone," "Mental Health is a Spectrum" and "Find Help, Find Hope."

Felix said she has two children with different issues brought out by trauma. She's seen the difficulty children with challenges can have.   

"Kids are being bullied by other kids, even teachers make comments and I don't know if they think they're trying to help sometimes but it doesn't help the situation, so it's a hard thing," she said. "There needs to be more help ... doctors and psychiatrists, we just don't have that many in this area. ...

"I think it would be nice if there were more options out there."

But the Department of Mental Health has fewer resources. Funding for mental health is down 5 percent over the last seven years when adjusted for inflation, although both Gov. Charlie Baker and the House's budgets fiscal 2016 include a slight uptake over this year. Funding for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services is basically flat.
 
There is also concern over the loss of experienced staffing at DMH, with more than 40 percent eligible for Baker's early retirement proposal, part of a plan to reduce the state's payroll by 5,000 positions.

For more information, contact the National Alliance on Mental Health for Berkshire County
The Systems of Care Committee meets the 3rd Friday at 1 p.m. at Child Care of the Berkshires.

"Always when you're putting a budget together, let's cut the most vulnerable ... for me, the children come first," said Rachel Branch, a respite caregiver who's been fostering children for 19 years through Berkshire Children and Families. "I'm talking about the whole realm of the Department of Children and Families and mental health services and all of it are underfunded.   

"It's unacceptable to use the most vulnerable in your budget debate ... I know they've cut millions from the DCF budget and it enrages me."

Childhood mental illness is not a rare condition and crosses spectra and incomes. It is believed 1 in 10 children and adolescents experience mental illness in any given year; that jumps to 1 in 5 after age 18. Up to 70 percent of children in the juvenile court system have mental health issues and many drop out of school.

Intervention can be critical since an estimated 90 percent have treatable conditions.

Corinne Case, a career coach and bereavement counselor, said teachers need support in learning how to help children who may be affected by parents exhausted from working multiple jobs, struggling with addiction or their own mental health crises.

"What we're talking about is valuing the health of children," she said. "You can't put a price tag on that."

Case thinks the anxiety, fear and distrust from the terror attacks of 2001 have seeped into the nation's — and its children's — consciousness. Brayton School physical education teacher Karen Daigle believes the stress of modern education — constant testing and hours on Common Core subjects — is also taking a toll.  

"They have to be on task in school, the kids are not playing, they're not having enough recess at school. They are not running, rolling down the hill, spinning around," she said. "Kids are not developing their core strength and their muscles. They are not healthy physically so they're antsy in school not because they have no attention but because they have to move."

Daigle said professional education for teachers on childhood mental illness would be welcome. "We need to learn the signs and how to handle those signs," she said.

Alcombright said mental illness is the loneliest illness, addiction the loneliest disease.

"We need to raise awareness because we need to beat down the stigma," he said. "I'm just really proud to be out here with this group and basically saying that mental illness is exactly that, an illness.

"We need to recognize it, families need to recognize it, we need to talk about it as such and not hide from it and feel our kids need to hide from it."

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