May is National Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States. According to Mental Health America, approximately 1 in 5 adults and 1 in 3 adolescents are experiencing a mental health struggle of some kind.
For adults, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and substance use disorders continue to be the most often experienced struggles. For adolescents, anxiety, attention deficits (ADHD), vaping addiction, and social media addiction continue to be the most often experienced struggles.
Approximately 22% of Americans experience their first symptoms of disordered mental health during childhood before the age of 14. Children’s mental health can often be missed or dismissed as something else, due to the more behavioral nature of the symptoms.
Given this data – we can make one confident conclusion: mental health struggles are much more common than you may think! So, it’s vitally important that we talk about the available solutions. Individual counseling and therapy, peer recovery coaching, and psychiatric medical care are all fantastic, trustworthy tools we have in our community. But, one of the most overlooked and underutilized tools is group therapy – in which a person participates in education and interpersonal discussion-based processing with a group of peers, facilitated by a master’s degree-level mental healthcare professional.
According to a study in the Research in Psychotherapy public medical journal, “Group psychotherapy has been shown to be equivalent to individual therapy for many disorders, including anxiety, depression, grief, eating disorders, and schizophrenia” (Burlingame & Strauss, 2021). Researchers also state that, “In addition to effectiveness in reducing symptoms, group offers members a sense of belonging, purpose, hope, altruism, and meaning throughout treatment” (Yalom & Leszcz, 2020).
The Willow Center in Brownsburg, Indiana offers two unique and effective group therapy programs for adults:
- Intensive Outpatient Treatment groups for adults, which meet 3 days/evenings per week for 3 hours each, for a period of 10 weeks or more.
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy groups for adults, which meet 2 days/evenings per week for 1 hour each, for a period of 24 weeks or more.
The Willow Center in Pittsboro, Indiana offers two practical and connective programs for adolescents:
- Intensive Outpatient Treatment groups for teens 13-17 years old, which meet 3 evenings per week for 3 hours each, for a period of 10 weeks or more.
- Regulation & Resilience groups for adolescents 11-13, and teens 13-17, which meet 1 evening per week for 1 hour each for a period of 8 weeks or more.
You don’t have to do this alone. The young person in your life who is struggling doesn’t have to do this alone. The Willow Center team is right here in the greater Hendricks County community, ready to help our neighbors feel hopeful again and take the next healthiest steps in life. Call us today at 317-852-3690.
Written by Chase Cotten, Operations & Community Director
Reviewed by Ashley English, LAC.
