It was a peaceful spring morning when staff, clients, and friends of Del Norte Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) walked down Pacific Avenue to the Flynn Center to receive a proclamation for Mental Health Awareness. On May 13, the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors proclaimed May as Mental Health Awareness Month, with the aim to ”raise awareness and understanding of Mental Health and to increase access to Mental Health services by offering hope to those in need.”
Staff of DHHS Public Health and Behavioral Health donned lime green in support of Mental Health Awareness Month, and their clients held signs that read “End the Stigma” and “Stop the Stigma.” As the board meeting was happening, Behavioral Health and Coastal Connections, a youth and young adult resource center funded through the Mental Health Service Act, shared resources outside the Flynn Center.
According to Meaghan McGlasson, Program Manager for Del Norte Behavioral Health, there is a stigma that those with significant mental illness are struggling or are unable to contribute to their community.
“Those kinds of myths just are not true,” McGlasson told Redwood Voice. “And we’re here today to say that even if you have a mental illness, you can still be a valuable member of your community, and you can still thrive with the proper treatment.”
The proclamation presented by the Board of Supervisors contained several global, national, state and county-wide statistics on mental illness. The first statistic said that in 2024 one in eight people lived with a mental health disorder, which is approximately 970 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. In California, 396,000 youth aged 12 to 17 have depression, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And in the 2023-24 fiscal year, Del Norte served 1,530 clients through its Behavioral Health services, 336 of them being children.
The proclamation commended the DHHS Behavioral Health Branch and community partner organizations for their work and ended with a call to action for citizens, government agencies, institutions, businesses, and schools “to recommit our efforts to increasing awareness and understanding of mental illness.”
These statistics were meant to help people understand that mental illness is more common than they might think and can happen to anyone, McGlasson said.
“It doesn’t matter socioeconomic status, color of your skin, anything like that. If you’ve got a brain, you have mental health, and we all need to take care of it,” she said.
McGlasson hopes that the proclamation will help more people be comfortable enough to say they could benefit from help, and that there will be a stronger drive to support those who are struggling with mental health issues.
“When you’re not struggling, maybe you can take a walk with somebody. You can encourage somebody to journal. You can be there to be an empathetic ear,” she said. “We have mental health first aid classes through the county behavioral health office that will teach anybody in our community to be a first-aider. When they recognize that somebody is struggling with a mental health challenge, how can you respond in a way that would be helpful and make you a mental health advocate?”
For more information on the Del Norte Behavioral Health Branch, visit their page on the county website. The Behavioral Health Branch Office is located at 455 K Street in Crescent City and is open Monday through Friday, 8:00am-5:00pm.
