September 10th Meeting

Candy introduced Donna Betts founder and director of Family Hope that has only been in existence 1 ½ years. She began by presenting the following United States facts:

 

Cancer

19 Million

8.20%

Heart Disease

26.5 Million

11.50%

Mental Illness

57.7 Million

25%

Next she presented the mental illness statistics (www.familyhopeme.org) for Maine:

·                       Approximately 21% of Maine’s adult population (215,000) experienced a mental illness in 2008-09.

·                       Of those adults, nearly 48,000 experienced a serious mental illness.

·                       Every year, on average, 160 Maine residents die by suicide, approximately 1,100 are hospitalized, and 1,500 are treated for self-inflicted injury.

 

Cumberland & York counties have 79,532 with 17,835 considered serious that are the target families for her organization.

Donna told us about her sons Luke and Josh and their individual battles. Tragically, Josh died at age 24 the victim of suicide. She discovered the gap in service for a child in his 20’s and noted that mental illness is often discovered while in college. Privacy is a real issue with being over age 18. Despite being providing support, parents sometimes are unable to obtain vital information such as diagnosis or even a clinical appointment schedule. After living the frustration of watching her child died with no support available, she founded Family Hope.

After a year spent working in concert with other community stakeholders—and in order to meet a profoundly under-served constituency (families taking care of mentally ill loved ones)—Family Hope was incorporated in 2012 to educate, encourage and guide Maine families who care about someone living with mental illness.”

In addition to providing helpful information, our mission is to provide hope by encouraging and supporting family members. We invite you to explore our resources to help you cope with your loved one’s mental illness, as well as words of hope that recovery for your loved one is possible.”

At the conclusion of her Q & A, Donna presented us with canvas bags emblazoned with the URL of her organization: www.familyhopeme.org.