Scott Rasmus, executive director of Butler County Mental Health Board, said of the 370,000 people in Butler County, about 25 percent — 75,000 to 100,000 — have a mental health need. But only about 25,000 people seek out treatment.
The multi-disciplinary panel included Rasmus; Rhonda Benson, Butler County National Alliance on Mental Health; Rev. Daniel Clemens, First Baptist Church in Hamilton; Christy Honschopp, Beckett Springs Hospital; Dr. Michael Keys, Lindner Center of HOPE; Sheree Lynch, Positive Leaps; and moderator Tom Kelechi, Envision Partnerships.
Clemens said often the church is the first place a family member, or the individual with the problem, will turn to for help. He said because of that, churches need a go-to list of references and places to provide those people.
“I’d say most clergy are woefully inadequate and untrained in what to do,” Clemens said.
Rasmus said two numbers to call are the Butler County United Way’s 2-1-1 that provides a free referral service to relevant programs, as well as the 24-hour Butler County Mental Health Crisis Line at 1-844-427-4747.
Benson, who connects families with resources, said mental illness is a biological brain disorder that impacts a person’s thinking, moods and daily functions, and can start to reveal itself at age 14. But she added that’s also the age when adolescence starts which makes it harder to distinguish between normal behaviors and a mental illness.
“All children misbehave but we expect children to misbehave in a certain way,” depending on age group, said Lynch, president of Positive Leaps, a specialized day treatment center for children with severe behavior problems.
To help families differentiate, Lynch said you have to first look at the degree at which the behavior is impairing the child’s success in home, school and out in the community.
“When a child begins to display behaviors that are beyond the typical and they’re persistent … then we begin to start asking ourselves questions, what’s happening with this particular child,” Lynch said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that child has a mental illness but it should be a signal to the adults around that child that some further investigation ought to take place.”
Rasmus said there are 16 mental health providers in Butler County providing 50 different specialized treatment programs. He said the top mental health issues are first mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder; then anxiety and psychotic disorders; followed by substance abuse.
Keys, director of senior adult psychiatry at Lindner Center of HOPE in Mason, said the causes of mental illness are varied, from biological and genetic to triggered by life experiences and stress.
“When it comes to mental illness it would be nice to say we have it all figured out and it’s all genetic and we can understand it from a biological aspect, but we don’t and it’s much more complex than that,” Keys said.
Honschopp, director of clinical services at West Chester’s for-profit hospital Beckett Springs, said the hospital teaches its patients how to cope with the daily stress and routine anxiety that comes with life.
“We’ve almost come to a point where the minute there’s any hint of anxiety, people feel that’s abnormal and I need to do something to stamp that out,” Honschopp said. “We’re trying to teach people you have to have a tolerance to that.”
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