Healing: For many Lakelanders, the road to mental health is a slog

Mental health care in Lakeland is hard to access — and costly.

The Florida problem — as described by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

  • 1 in 5 U.S. adults experiences mental illness each year.
  • An estimated 796,000 adults in Florida didn’t get needed mental health care in the last year.
  • Nearly half of the adults in Florida who needed mental health care in the last year and didn’t get it said cost was the reason.
  • Floridians are five times more likely to have to go out-of-network for mental health care than for primary health care — making services harder to find and much more expensive.

Overwhelmed: Lakeland therapists say they’re seeing a wave of demand for mental health services, especially from families with children, couples in crisis and trauma survivors.

Finding a provider is difficult…

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