This guest article from YourTango was written by Kim Olver. 

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. We will go to the doctor for a physical checkup, but how many of us engage in a mental health checkup? The goals of my process, InsideOut Empowerment, provide us with ten things we can do to improve our well-being and increase our happiness.

1. Assess the strength of your needs while learning to obtain the proper amounts for happiness. We all have five basic human needs — connection, freedom, significance, survival and enjoyment. While we share that in common, the strength of our needs vary. So for example, one person may be high in connection and enjoyment, while another person might be high in significance and freedom. The key to happiness is to engage in behavior that brings you the precise amount of each need you want. Having too little leaves you feeling deprived and having too much can leave you feeling over-saturated.

Every month, I run across a newspaper or online article about how such-and-such mental disorder is an “epidemic.” I can rattle off the disorders that have been paired with this word so far this year — bipolar disorder in children, ADHD, depression and anxiety, a lesser form of schizophrenia… and the list goes on.

In fact, it makes me wonder whether there’s really any journalism done any more, or if it’s just, “Let’s pair one expert’s opinion with the word ‘epidemic,’ and there’s our story!”

The problem with a word like “epidemic” is that, sans a legitimate base comparison, you can always throw this claim around with little regard for actual scientific data. Because if you actually look at the scientific data, you’d be hard pressed to use the word “epidemic” for virtually any mental disorder.

When clinical psychologist Deborah Serani, PsyD, was diagnosed with depression, she was relieved. But soon after the comfort and relief dissipated, she felt shame and guilt and even started reconsidering her profession.

Serani writes poignantly about this so-called self-stigma in her beautiful, information-packed book, Living with Depression:

…I felt inadequate and embarrassed by my diagnosis. I knew that society feared anything that strayed from the norm, and the idea of being seen as different, disabled, or dysfunctional really frightened me. I didn’t tell anyone about my depression, kept my medication hidden in a bedside dresser, and kept secret my feelings of failure. I even went so far as to believe that I should hang up my shingle as a practicing psychologist because, clearly, I was incapable of taking care of myself as a person. How could I take care of others as a professional? Despite the fact that I was a psychologist educated in the mind, brain and body, the misconceptions about mental illness shoehorned themselves into my life.

Fortunately, as Serani started feeling better, these negative thoughts and feelings went away.

In her book Serani outlines other types of stigma, and provides tips for dealing with them.

I was a successful actor. Then I had more and more success. I won an Emmy for my role on The Sopranos and I thought: That’s it? The Emmy was supposed to make me feel better. I left it on the floor of my car. It didn’t give me the feelings a life you dream about is supposed to give you. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. Success didn’t cure my clinical depression. I started to self-destruct.

It was two days before shooting began on Canvas in 2005 and I was about to hit bottom. Ironically, I was working on a film about mental health. I got a call from my old friend, actor Charlie Rocket.

Charlie was a brilliant actor and comedian and a self-ordained minister. He married Nancy and me, our ceremony like a sketch on Saturday Night Live. He surprised us and our 300 guests by presiding over our nuptials in his magenta tuxedo and John Lennon rose-colored glasses. He spoke of those rose-colored glasses as a metaphor for married life in his wonderful, deep voice, sounding like the voice of God Himself. He was so funny that director Andy Davis cast Charlie on the spot for his next movie, Steal Big Steal Little. Charlie was my go-to man for many of my problems.

So when Charlie called out of nowhere, I was glad to hear that voice. In our fifteen minute conversation, we shared a couple of laughs, and made plans to get together with friends over the Thanksgiving weekend, some eight weeks away.

On my second day of shooting, Nancy called to tell me Charlie was dead. He had slit his throat with two kitchen knives, one in each hand. He didn’t leave a note.

How could this be? I just talked to the guy. There was no evidence that he was troubled in any way. How angry must he have been?

Even in today’s advanced world, there’s still much misunderstanding and stigma surrounding mental illness. Many of us are quick to dismiss people with mental illness as inferior or less than or wonder why they can’t just snap out of it.

Many of us also rarely believe that mental illness merits the same understanding and compassion as medical illnesses such as diabetes, cancer or heart disease.

Such stigma has devastating effects. It “prevents some people from accessing support and professional help and breeds shame and secrecy, which can significantly worsen a person’s condition as well as their prognosis — even to a point of being life-threatening, in the case of suicidal ideation,” according to Joyce Marter, LCPC, a psychotherapist and owner of Urban Balance, a multi-site counseling practice in the greater Chicago area.

That’s why it’s so important to talk about the facts. Below, experts share accurate information about mental illness.

Demonstrating that the folks who are revising the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) are listening to the scientific data, they have nixed two new proposed diagnoses — anxiety-depressive syndrome and attenuated psychosis syndrome. The changes were announced this week at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, the organization largely responsible for updating the reference manual used by health and mental health professionals to make diagnoses.

The critics were worried that these new diagnoses would label millions of Americans with a mental disorder — and offering them subsequent treatment — that today wouldn’t qualify for such diagnosis or treatment.

For instance, while anxiety mixed with depression is actually quite commonly seen in the wild of clinical practices, there is no specific diagnosis for this mixed mood state. The DSM-5 sought to correct this problem — that clinicians are treating millions for a problem the DSM says doesn’t technically exist. But critics worried the new criteria were too lax and might result in over-diagnosis.

The same was true for attenuated psychosis syndrome. The proposed diagnosis was an effort to get children and young adults into treatment sooner for experiencing weird thoughts or hallucinations. But people worried that it would lead to unnecessary treatment of kids for a potentially temporary problem.

The evidence is in, and the death of NFL football player Junior Seau has been ruled a suicide. The speculation is that he suffered from depression as a result of the concussions he sustained as a pro football player in the U.S. Seau spent most of his football career as a San Diego Charger.

Many in the news media are portraying this as some sort of new news — that having your head repeatedly banged and bashed can cause long-lasting brain damage. Even with a padded helmet, there’s been a wealth of research demonstrating that head injuries still occur. The human head just wasn’t meant for years and years of such repeated abuse.

It’s also not the first time we’ve known of this link between football playing, concussions, and being at a much higher risk for depression (and even dementia). Perhaps this time the message will get through.

Up until Monday, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) claimed that 95 percent of the vets are seen within 14 days after contacting them for mental health issues if not in crisis. We now know that’s a lie.

Federal investigators revealed yesterday that half the veterans who seek out mental health care in the VA system waited about 50 days — not 14 — before receiving a full evaluation. That’s not just a tiny lie. That’s a lie covering up a wait time that is 350 percent greater than the VA’s original claims. A wait time that clearly demonstrates that demand is outstripping supply of qualified mental health professionals.

But wait, it gets better. Because that’s not the only thing the VA has been fudging the numbers about.

It’s depression awareness week in the UK. The Depression Alliance hosts the week-long effort to make people more aware of the facts about depression, one of the most common mental health issues facing people in the UK and around the world.

They host the week in an effort to try and end the stigma and prejudice associated with depression. They say you can help “by raising awareness, holding a fundraiser, donating or joining Depression Alliance.” You can also share your story with them on their website.

Depression is the feeling of being sad all the time for no reason, having no hope for the future, being unable to enjoy things in life you used to enjoy (friends, hobbies, etc.), and is often accompanied by problems sleeping, feeling lethargic, and taking no pleasure in anything (specific depression symptoms). It is a complex disorder — not a pure disease — that has significant underlying biological, psychological and social components in most people who have it.

Feeling more aware yet? Good, then we’re half-way there.

I applaud the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) decision last week to increase its mental health staffing in facilities by nearly 10 percent across the board, adding up to 1,600 new clinicians — psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and more. (My sources within the VA indicate most of these positions will be LPC and Master’s level clinicians — not psychologists or psychiatrists.)

It’s a good step forward as the military struggles with the hundreds of thousands of returning vets who have increasing mental health needs. Most of the new hires — about 1,400 — will be clinicians that work directly with vet patients.

But let’s also put this into some perspective, too. According to its website, the VA operates 172 hospitals across the United States, and 837 outpatient clinics. That’s 1,009 places where a vet can go to get help. That means that, on average, each clinic or hospital will get 1.4 new clinicians.

One and a half new clinicians per facility? Not nearly as impressive.

In a short-sighted move that will only result in larger bills for the city down the road, Chicago is shutting down half of its 12 mental health clinics. The mental health clinics serve lower income families, and those who can least afford to pay for behavioral healthcare services.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel decided to shutter 6 of the city’s 12 clinics in his 2012 budget, after Gov. Quinn’s budget cuts to the state budget drastically reduced state payments for mental health services across Illinois.

Illinois, like many states, usually finds it easiest to cut public mental health services first, because mental health has few lobbyists that work on behalf of the population most affected — the poor.

After a decade old legal battle, the Judge Rotenberg Center lost its effort to bar the public from viewing how “treatment” is administered at the facility. In this troubling, emotional video, we see then 18-year-old Andre McCollins repeatedly shocked 31 times. His crime? Failure to remove his jacket in a timely manner.

His family has brought a lawsuit against the Center, saying they never expected their teen to be tortured as a form of “treatment.” The Judge Rotenberg Center 8 years ago convinced a judge not to let the public see the video. But during a hearing today, Superior Court Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara refused to bar the local Fox television station from videotaping the recording.

Which means — for the first time ever — the public gets to see the “treatment” used by the Judge Rotenberg Center. I use that term loosely, because in almost any other setting or environment, most ordinary people would call this torture.

Click through to watch the video. But be warned — it is disturbing.