Working in the mental health field for more years than she’d care to admit, Baptist Behavioral Health Clinical Manager and Therapist Kim Criswell has treated all kinds of patients.
On Tuesday, Criswell told the Rotary Club of Columbus that her team sees patients with severe mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder and more. But she also sees patients that may just be “going through a rough patch.”
“Nearly half of adults, 46%, will experience some type of mental health disorder in their lifetime,” Criswell said.
Symptoms to watch for when it comes to mental health concerns, she said, include changes in sleep or appetite, rapid changes in mood, withdrawal from activities, drop in functioning, problems with concentration, sensitivity to sights and sounds, apathy, illogical thinking, anxiety and others.
“Any of these symptoms — one or two of these symptoms — does not mean you have a mental illness,” Criswell said. “It means that you’re human. We all are. When you see multiple symptoms popping up, and they’re popping up on a regular basis, that’s a problem.”
When mental health symptoms start to impair daily life, Criswell said, it may be time to start thinking about seeking help. Adult patients going through less severe symptoms can be treated through Baptist’s outpatient facilities, which includes two psychiatrists, two psychiatric nurse practitioners, counseling services and an outpatient substance abuse program.
Others with more severe mental illnesses may need to go through Baptist’s inpatient facility, which includes 38 beds. The average length of a stay in inpatient treatment, excluding those that are committed, is about 3 to 5 days, Criswell said, as Baptist Behavioral Health is a stabilization unit, not a long-term facility.
Some patients with more severe life-inhibiting symptoms, she said, suffer from delusions due to their mental illnesses. While others may know these delusions aren’t true, those who suffer from them genuinely believe them.
“Over the course of my career, I’ve met Jesus Christ once,” Criswell said. “I’ve met John the Baptist several times. I’ve met somebody who had a computer implanted in her stomach and the government was controlling her with it.”
Out of the 38 beds in the inpatient facility, Criswell said, eight beds are on a separate floor for patients who are 55 or older with geriatric symptoms. These patients are separated for their own protection, she said.
“If any of you have anybody in your families with Alzheimer’s or any other form of dementia, you know that sometimes, folks with dementia can have behaviors,” she said. “They get agitated. They start yelling out or striking out in some way. We treat that with medications, get them stabilized, and then we can send them back to their nursing home or back home.”
Baptist Behavioral Health does not treat children or adolescents, Criswell said, but the team will help to place those patients in other facilities in the state.
While mental health issues may appear in a variety of ways, Criswell said it is important to destigmatize mental illnesses so more patients can get help. She shared a 2021 National Alliance on Mental Illness statistic, saying 14.1 million people or 5.5% of the total population of the United States at any given time have a serious mental illness.
“If you actually meet people with serious mental illness or any mental illness, what you’ll find is they’re just ordinary humans who have a very, very difficult thing,” she said. “If you’ve got diabetes, no one thinks anything about it.”
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