PEORIA MAGAZINE January 2023

C O M M E N T A R Y

AMERICA'S OTHER PANDEMIC BY JOHN F. GILLIGAN O n average, 20% of all adults in America wrestle with various degrees of mental health issues, from mild to moderate to severe impairment. A larger percentage of young adults, approaching 30%, struggle with the same issue.

abuse and overdose, depression, suicide, violence, anxiety, and the list goes on. America has been plagued by self inf licted deaths including suicide, drug overdoses, DUIs and youth street killings. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the year 2020, 12.2 million people seriously thought about suicide; 3.2 millionmade plans for suicide; 12million attempted suicide; and 45,979 died by suicide. That’s one death every 11 minutes. Sadly, these statistics have been increasing without interruption since the 1990s. Then there’s the nation’s substance abuse crisis, from alcohol to narcotics,

including the recent opioid epidemic and now the deadly fentanyl. The National Institute of Drug Abuse has tracked overdose deaths since 1999. That year, there were 20,000, which rose to 38,329 in 2010, then spiked to 93,000 in 2020. This national tragedy of lost lives and human talent crossed 100,000 this past year. The data on mental illness and substance abuse show a 30-year non stop growth trajectory. It’swhy it’s called a pandemic. Two things have become abundantly clear. First, there’s a significant popu lation of the seriously mentally ill and addicted, approximately one-third, who

When it comes to serious and disabling mental illness, that number exceeds the entire population of Illinois, 12.67 million. Among adolescents, 22.2 percent are estimated to have severe impair ment. School systems can easily be overwhelmed with problems such as identity and personality disorders, drug

80 JANUARY 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE