If national data applies evenly to Washington County, nearly 10,000 of its slightly more than 48,000 adult residents have some form of mental illness, ranging in impact from mild to severe functional impairment in their lives and the lives of others.

After several years of dormancy, a county chapter of the advocacy group National Alliance on Mental Illness – NAMI – has resumed activity and scheduled meetings in the next few weeks.

Although the chapter, founded just more than 15 years ago, has not been active in recent years, the conditions it addresses have certainly not gone away. The rate of occurrence of mental illnesses is based on self-reporting surveys, which notoriously underreport conditions that are stigmatized, and remains at about one in five persons in the adult population, and one in 25 for mental illnesses severe enough to have life-limiting impacts.

Conditions range from mild obsessions and anxieties to severe depression and schizophrenia. NAMI has developed 40 years of experience in helping people who suffer from mental illness and their families come to terms with their conditions.

The Washington County chapter is being organized by Brett and Melissa Nicholas, both long-time members of the community who have first-hand experience with mental illness and previous involvement in the local NAMI chapter, with support from Miriam Keith, recovery and prevention advocate for the county Behavioral Health Board, and Dr. Karen Binkley, Behavioral Health Board president.

NAMI is a nonprofit advocacy organization that offers two general groups of programs – Connection, intended for people who have varying degrees of mental illness, and Family-to-Family, for the larger and sometimes more greatly affected group of people whose loved ones are mentally ill. Vast as they seem, even those numbers gathered from surveys by the National Institutes of Health probably don’t capture the dimensions of the problem.

“People under-report on these surveys drastically,” Brett Nicholas said Monday. “And the number of people reported to be in treatment, it’s just a drop in the bucket.”

Keith said the inherent nature of mental illness means that people who experience it might not be aware they are ill, and as a result only 40 percent of the mentally ill seek treatment, and for those who do the median length of time between onset and treatment is 10 years.

“There’s a stigma involved, and people don’t want to admit they’re mentally ill,” Nicholas said.

Connection, he said, is a meeting where people can talk about their conditions in a relaxed but structured environment, led by a trained volunteer.

“You have to have experienced mental illness to become a facilitator,” he said. “It’s a support group to help with whatever problem you’re currently having, and the structured nature of it keeps the discussion on track. It provides coping mechanisms, learning how to live with what you have, and that’s not always easy.”

The Connection format has been refined by NAMI over the years and has a track record of effectiveness, he said.

“We can share experiences, tell people how to talk to therapists and how to find them,” he said. “Those who know it best are those who are living with it.”

Families, Keith said, might face even more difficult challenges. As in Connection, the Family-to-Family facilitators must be people who have direct experience.

The program is 12 weeks of classes intended to help people understand and support loved ones with mental illnesses, gain communication and coping skills, and become advocates for themselves and their loved ones, the program description says.

Nicholas noted that NAMI volunteers are not therapists but can help people in need seek out treatment.

The plight of the mentally ill has been complicated for centuries by public perception and stigma, and even recent advances in science that show mental illness can be physiologic and chemical in origin are slow to be adapted in culture. Families, including siblings, parents and children are in a particularly difficult position.

“Parents especially don’t want to believe it about their children,” Keith said.

“There’s guilt involved because they think they might have caused it,” Binkley said.

Melissa Nicholas said that in addition to the direct services for the mentally ill and their families, part of NAMI’s mission is general separation of fact from fiction.

“It’s an awareness campaign to stamp out the stigma,” she said.

The first meeting for Connection is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. Feb. 7 in the second-floor library of First Presbyterian Church, 501 Fourth St.

The first session for the Family-to-Family educational program is to be held at 6 p.m. Feb. 26.

For more information on either program or NAMI, email namiwashcounty@gmail.com.

National Alliance on Mental Illness

•Active in 50 states.

•Founded: 1979.

•Number of local affiliates: More than 500.

•Number of affiliates in Ohio: 39.

•Average number of people afflicted with mental illness in their lifetimes: 1 out of 5.

•Percent of population with mental illness that substantially interferes with life activities: 4 percent.

•Adults with substance use disorder who have co-occurring mental illness: 1 in 2.

Contact:

•NAMI Connection, recovery support group, Washington County: First meeting, 6 p.m. Feb. 7, First Presbyterian Church, 501 Fourth St., Wooster St. entrance, second floor library. Contact namiwashcounty@gmail.com

•NAMI Family-to-Family, education program for families of people with mental illnesses, 6 p.m. Feb. 26. For information call Jane Young at 740-885-2115 or Karen Binkley at 740-374-6086.

Source: NAMI.