MANSFIELD — Joe Trolian wants people in need to see faces of hope in their own Richland County community.
That’s the theme for Mental Health Month activity in May, which the executive director of Richland County Mental Health & Recovery Services explained to county commissioners on Thursday.
“What we’re looking at is encouraging people to look for those faces of hope while they are in the process of entering recovery,” Trolian said before commissioners issued an official Mental Health Month proclamation.
“We now have more people entering recovery on any given day than we have seen in ages. It’s indicative of a much larger increase in problems that we’ve had in the past. People are seeking help and we have a lot of agencies that people can seek that help from,” he said.
One place those in need can find faces of hope is on the agency website, which offers a variety of videos featuring local residents who are working on recoveries of their own.
(Above is one of the “Faces of Hope” videos available at the Richland County Mental Health & Recovery Services website.)
Trolian said the COVID-19 pandemic helped to create a perfect storm for mental health and addiction issues.
“I think one of the biggest issues is we’ve just come out of one of the most stressful periods that we have experienced in decades,” he said.
“People have realized that you can’t isolate for long periods of time without there being some adverse effects. We’ve also been dealing with an opiate epidemic (though) I am happy to say in Richland County (we’re) actually seeing at least our number of overdose deaths coming down,” Trolian said.
“We had the highest rate of suicides last year with 31. It’s been a perfect storm for just general stress and difficulty with people’s emotional wellbeing,” he said.
The good news, Trolian said, is there are many resources available in the community for mental health and addiction issues.
“The thing that’s helped is we have created a lot of open doors through the behavioral health urgent care. We’ve got a mobile response stabilization and support program for youth through Family Life (Counseling).“
He said a mobile crisis unit will also be running a regular basis in 2023 through Catalyst Life Services.
“This is going to give us an opportunity to see people in the community where they’re at, rather than having the crisis get to the point where they have to wind up at the (emergency department). Then we’re going to the (emergency department) and there’s all new stressors that come into play when you have to go through that process,” Trolian said.
“We’ve seen the increases because we’ve increased the accessibility. But (people are) hearing that there is help out there and they’re seeking help,” he said.
2023 Mental Health Month events calendar
Trolian, joined at the meeting by Associate Director Sherry Branham, went over a packed calendar of events with commissioners to mark Mental Health Month in May.
“We do May as Mental Health Month, get everybody excited and ready to get out of those winter blahs and then enjoy their summer. And then we do recovery month in September. So if anybody was doing anything they shouldn’t have been doing over the summer, we can help them out,” he said.
“We encourage people just to get out and enjoy the month and look for those faces of hope.”
