Craig Press s capstone event for Longevity Project embraces need for mental health awareness, services craigdailypress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from craigdailypress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Mental health stigma endures despite hundreds of years of progress in the science, treatment and understanding around mental illness.
While we no longer drill holes in the skull to release evil spirits, and there has not been a mass sterilization and genocide of mentally ill people since Nazi Germany, stigma remains deep and widespread on personal, societal and institutional levels.
While mentally ill people today are not locked up en masse in asylums, a vast number end up in prison or homeless.
And the impact of the stigma itself is devastating. Read more
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Darby McNamara was well-known in the community. He was an avid athlete, a talented artist and had an excellent sense of humor. It was his dream to go to culinary school and become a chef, having worked in the Steamboat Springs restaurant scene for a number of years. But on July 4, 2010, at age 21, he took his own life.
In school, he had been labeled a “problem child” and a behavioral issue. He became addicted to drugs and alcohol in middle school, and he was diagnosed with ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There hadn’t really been talk of depression, which his older sister Meghan McNamara said seemed to exacerbate most of his issues, which she said started in childhood.