The Sunlight Village team strives to be experts in the mental wellness of youth, young adults and families. In addition to providing treatment, our team of providers and peer navigators develop and present educational trainings on mental health, stress, community wellness, implicit bias, team building, social determinants of health, infant mortality and more.

Mental Health Facts

Mental illnesses are biologically based brain disorders that can be affected by trauma and environmental factors.

One out of five people in America has a mental illness, yet less than one-third of affected adults and one-half of children receive treatment. Mental illnesses are biologically based brain disorders. They cannot be overcome through willpower and are not related to a person’s character or intelligence. They are medical conditions that disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, daily functioning, and ability to relate to others. People affected can be of any age, race, religion, or income.

The Global Burden of Disease study, conducted by the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and Harvard University, reported that mental illness is second only to cardiovascular disease in regard to burden (i.e. years of life lost due to premature death or disability). The effects of untreated mental illnesses are far reaching. They can include:

  • Missed educational opportunities and failure in school

    58 percent of children with a mental illness do not graduate from high school.

  • Lost productivity and unemployment

    Employees who are depressed are twice as likely to miss work and seven times more likely to be less productive on the job. Yet, treatment for clinical depression has a high success rate.

  • Increased crime and incarceration

    More than half of Ohio’s inmates have some type of mental illness; 12 percent are diagnosed with a severe mental

  • Inappropriate use of hospital emergency departments

    Comprehensive community-based mental health services can cut public hospital admissions and lengths of stay.

  • Premature death, including suicide

    In Ohio, more than 1,300 lives are lost to suicide each year.

Without treatment, the consequences of mental illness for the individual and society are staggering: unnecessary disability, unemployment, substance abuse, homelessness, inappropriate incarceration, and wasted lives. The economic cost of untreated mental illness is more than $100 billion each year in the United States.

Treatment

The good news about mental illness is that recovery is possible. Early identification and treatment is of vital importance. Most people diagnosed with a serious mental illness can experience relief from their symptoms by actively participating in an individual treatment plan.

For more information, visit the Ohio Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services at http://mha.ohio.gov/