Research by Susan L.

  I went on line and did some looking around. I wanted to know the statistics for the hospital regarding mental health visits. It shocked me. Mary McGill, an independent service affiliated with the hospital, has eight hundred referrals a year. They are the ones who come and do an assessment when someone is in crisis at the ER. Family doctors can recommend those in need as well. It doesn't have to be via the hospital. Mary McGill provides short term counselling too. This number doesn't reflect those already under their care, who utilise their psychiatric professionals on a regular basis.
  I've heard the statistics, one in five of us will be affected either directly or indirectly by mental health.  Yada, yada, yada...However, to have two or more new people a day in this small town desperately needing help is a much more personal number. It's one I can relate to.
  I pass them in the grocery store. I open doors for them at Walmart. I patiently wait for them to cross the street. I bump into them at Tim's, at church. Wherever people are, they are there too. My head rapidly filled up with questions. Why? Who? And more importantly, how can I help? How do I connect these people with the Krasman? How do I direct them to an environment that lives and breathes the ideas of recovery and hope?
  How do I get them to come in out of the cold?
  I know how alone I felt following my own hospital stays. There was shame, self-recrimination, guilt, embarrassment, and an agony of the soul unlike anything I had ever experienced. God, Who gave me the strength to call the Krasman in those terrible dark days after I was sent home, saved my life and just being there has helped me reclaim it piece by piece.
  Thy will be done, my Lord. Guide me to do Your will. If I can help just one...
  "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Ps 139:23-24