October 10, 2016 is World Mental Health Day, a day designated to raise awareness of and organize support for mental health issues. Millions of Americans (let alone the rest of the world’s population) are affected by mental illness; it is so prevalent that either we are affected ourselves, or we know family members and/or friends who struggle with mental health issues.
This year’s theme is psychological first aid. What is psychological first aid (PFA), you ask? PFA is an approach used by mental health care providers and emergency/disaster response workers to help people function and cope in the immediate aftermath of natural or man-made disasters (for example, devastation from hurricanes, tornadoes, fires or mass shootings). Interventions are designed to offer support and practical assistance to those who are affected and can come in the form of providing food, water, shelter and counseling, among other things. These interventions help reduce the initial distress caused by traumatic events, addressing the physical, psychological, behavioral and spiritual effects suffered.
If administered in a timely manner, PFA may even help reduce the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) developing in trauma survivors. PTSD is a mental health condition that can be chronic and severely debilitating, and it occurs in some people following any kind of traumatic event (such as physical assault, death of a close loved one or experiencing or witnessing natural disasters). Since PFA interventions can support resilience factors in survivors of trauma, its importance in helping reduce the incidence of PTSD and other related mental illness can’t be understated.
Since it can be hard to imagine what it is like to live through a catastrophic event if we haven’t been through it ourselves, we wonder how others recover and go forward in life. The library has a number of memoirs written by people who survived life-altering trauma and then proceeded to make meaningful lives, anew. Their stories speak to the resiliency of the human body, heart and mind and are a great source of inspiration and hope.
In an effort to raise awareness and educate people about mental health and illness in our own community, here at DBRL we have created a collection of Mental Health To-Go Kits, made possible with funding from a Library Services and Technology Act grant and the Missouri Department of Mental Health. These kits provide helpful overviews for several common mental health disorders or challenges (e.g., depression, anxiety, substance abuse) and contain an assortment of materials, including books, DVDs, audio CDs and local resources pamphlets. The kits are just the tip of the iceberg, though, in terms of library resources—there is a huge storehouse of other materials that cover a wide range of mental health and illness topics, including caring for the mentally ill.
Although none of us wants it to be so, at any point in our lives any one of us can experience life-altering trauma, which could affect our mental well-being and ability to function. Knowing this, we see the importance of doing what we can to ensure that agencies offering appropriate mental health services are made easily available to those in need of them.
