Many older adults in rural areas forgo treatment
Mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression are common among older adults in rural areas, affecting 10 to 25 percent of that population. But many of those people with them suffer in silence rather than seeking treatment.
Researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine wanted to know why, so they questioned 478 adults aged 60 and older in rural North Carolina. The most common barrier to treatment, according to their study? The belief that “I should not need help.” Other commonly cited barriers: not knowing where to go, distance, mistrust of counselors or therapists, “not wanting to talk with a stranger about private matters” and stigma.
Stigma – the sense that something is shameful – may be felt more acutely in small rural towns because of the relative lack of anonymity there.
“We as a society have a hard time asking for help, so it’s hard enough to ask for help [without feeling] that everybody’s going to know it,” said Dennis Mohatt, vice president of the behavioral mental health program at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and director of the WICHE Center for Rural Mental Health Research.
“Your neighbors don’t have a clue in a city if you’re going to go get some help. But everybody [in a small town] will know if your pickup truck is parked outside of the mental health provider’s office,” Mohatt said.
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