SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - According to the Surgeon General, one in five youth have a mental health disorder. There are 46,000 young people in Utah alone battling a mental illness, and those numbers are growing.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says it’s time to get beyond the stigma of mental illness and talk about it openly. Today he talked about the personal heartache of having a daughter that battles depression. “I spent a couple of nights last week, all night, driving the city looking for my daughter who had gone missing. I found her. She’s safe today, but it began at fourteen with her first suicide attempt. We’ve had a struggle. Families can’t do it alone.”
He says it’s important for the community to get involved, and to reach out to teens who are struggling. Attorney General Shurtleff says it’s also important for parents and teens battling mental illness in their own families to get help. He says help is available and there is hope.
Shurtleff was just one of several speakers at a conference on youth in crisis. The conference, entitled “Explosion of Youth Problems-crisis and solutions” also featured Four-star General/former U.S. Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, and First Lady Jeanette Herbert. General McCaffrey says teen mental health is a national crisis “This is a nation in crisis. More than 5 million teenagers have a serious behavioral disorder.”
General McCaffrey says mental health issues can manifest in a variety of ways, including drug and alcohol abuse. “If we diagnosed it earlier, in the eighth grade, you would say be careful this kid could start coping with a mental health challenge by self medicating with drugs.” He says the use of alcohol and drugs an also lead to mental health issues. “If you are binge drinking beer, smoking pot, and using ecstasy, and you are a ninth grader, within a year or two you are also going to have significant mental health challenges.”
He says statistics would show that the average age of experimenting with alcohol for the first time is twelve years old. “People as what the most dangerous drug is. It’s an eighth grader binge drinking beer, and probably smoking pot intermittently, because that’s the kid who is changing the neurochemistry of their brain early on in adolescents.”
Tyler Loeffler is headed into college this fall. He’s hopeful about the future, but says he was one of those teens who started drinking beer in junior high. By high school he was using prescription medication stolen from family medicine cabinets. “I was dependent on opiates, and fast forward a little bit, I was depending on heroin.”
His mother, Melissa Keitchry, says it was hard to admit her son had a problem. “You never want to believe that your child has gone down the wrong path and so you have a tremendous amount of denial, and I think I lived behind the door of, not my kid.”
Tyler says he was also in denial and he says it takes courage to move beyond that. “Most parents are in denial, as I was. It takes a lot of courage to look at the reality of it.” He says he needed help. “I don’t believe I could do it on my own at that point. I did feel alone, but the reality of it is, I wasn’t alone and I know that now.”
His mother says putting Tyler in treatment was the hardest thing she has ever done, and the best thing she has ever done. “It’s great to have my son back.” Keitchry also says if you suspect your child is struggling, get help. “Do it. It’s going to save their life, and in turn, it saves your family’s life.”
Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says “we all need to come together and realize that there are so many kids out there who are struggling, who are facing challenges. We’re asking them to take a leap of faith with us; we are asking them to trust us, to talk to us, to confide in us. Let us help you.”
