Young Adults Are Struggling With Mental Illness. This New Center In Newport Wants To Intervene Earlier.

The location of the young adult center in Middletown is separate from Newport Mental Health’s other sites that treat older clients. (Antonia Ayres-Brown/The Public’s Radio)

Jamie Lehane’s son was 18 years old and had just gone off to college, when Lehane’s phone rang unexpectedly.

“I got the call from the campus police that, ‘Your son is being rushed to a local community hospital, and that he’s had a serious mental breakdown,’” Lehane said.

It turned out to be a psychotic episode. Lehane said his son was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

For Lehane, who is president of the organization Newport Mental Health, this moment more than a decade ago was a turning point. He had dedicated his career to working in mental health, but he saw firsthand how easy it can be, as a parent, to misinterpret early signs and symptoms of mental illness in young adults.

“Even though full adult serious mental illness doesn’t emerge until late teens to 25…we should have been more alert,” Lehane said. “And because he was the captain of two varsity [sports], the basketball and the baseball teams, ‘Oh, he’s going through a phase and it was a breakup.’ Here I am, a national expert in children and adult mental illness — I missed it!”

Lehane said his now grown-up son is healthy and thriving, in part because of the effective treatment he got as a young adult. But many others go much longer, even years, from their first symptoms of severe mental illness to when they finally receive treatment.

“What happens in that ramp up period is hell,” Lehane said. “Trauma, arrests, co-occurring drug use — that is disabling, that’s as much as disabling as the initial mental illness.”

That’s why Newport Mental Health launched the new young adult center in December, to specialize in early intervention.

Read the rest of the story at The Public’s Radio’s website.