Rice County Mental Health Professionals Make House Calls on AM Minnesota 7-16/2015

James Marthaler is a Social Services Department Mental Health Supervisor and will talk about their new mobile mental health services.

A Northwestern Medicine study recently found depression can be detected by tracing the number of minutes people spend on their smartphone and by tracking your daily geographical locations.  Spending most of your time at home or in fewer locations indicates depression and based on phone sensor data, Northwestern scientists could identify people with depressive symptoms with 87 percent accuracy.

The average daily usage for depressed people was 68 minutes, while non-depressed people averaged 17 minutes.  The study was published July 15 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

The statistics are alarming and it's good to remember each number is a person.  Here are just a few from the Mental Health Association in a 2015 report.  Minnesota ranks sixth in the overall ranking indicating a lower prevalence of mental illness and higher rate of access to care..

42.5 million people (18.19%) of adults in America suffer from some mental illness.  19.7 million (8.46%) have a substance abuse problem and 8.8 million (3.77%) report serious thoughts of suicide.

The numbers for children are also staggering.  6.2 million children (8.5%) suffer from an emotional, behavioral or developmental issue.  1.6 million (6.48%) have a substance abuse problem.  2.1 million (8.6) report having at least one major depressive episode within the last year and over 8 percent of them report having attempted suicide once in the last year.

Marthaler and his colleagues want to see if better access to mental health services helps change those numbers.  Tune in 9:30 a.m. and both of us will be educated together.