Talking Health with the Clinton County Health Department

The holiday season brings with it nostalgia, excitement, joy and (sometimes) comfort. Let’s face it, it’s hard not to feel something when the neighborhood is lit up at night. Combine high expectations, with loneliness, stress or grief and it is no longer the most wonderful time of the year. In fact, NAMI reports that 24% of people with mental illness report the holidays make their conditions worse. Now, the holiday blues are different from mental illness, but even short-term mental health problems need to be taken seriously. They can lead to bigger things down the road. With us fresh off of Thanksgiving and the delight (and dysfunction) that can bring, this month we enlisted the help of our friend Richelle Gregory. Richelle is the Director of Community Services at Clinton County Mental Health and Addiction Services. Richelle, what make the holidays a difficult time for so many of us? The holiday season brings on additional stress for many of us. Family commitments, financial pressu...

 Like many of you, each day articles pop up on my social media feed referring to a ‘crisis’, a ‘problem’ or an ‘epidemic’ surrounding the use of opioids. But is what I see portrayed on the news or social media really what is happening here where I live? It’s common for us North Country folk to see statistics from New York City, Buffalo or Rochester referred to as ‘New York’ – but where we live is so different than those cities, it makes it hard to gauge how serious it really is. This month, we have enlisted the help of Carrie Coryer to help us better understand what this problem looks like in our community, and more importantly, what we can do to help. Carrie is the Harm Reduction Program Manager for the Alliance for Positive Health and works with individuals struggling with addiction each day to help guide them through the recovery process and break down the barriers they may have to achieve that success.  Carrie, growing up here I have always heard that drugs were a probl...