The two photos were in stark contrast – on the left, an image of an isolated young girl hunched over and crying, and on the right, a group of smiling kids at a pep rally.
Concord Deputy Battalion Chief Aaron McIntire asked the crowd gathered at Concord High School which they thought more accurately represented someone who was suffering from anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts.
“Most of us stereotype the person on the left,” he said, pointing up at his powerpoint presentation displayed on the auditorium’s stage.
“I can tell you the picture on your right is probably the more common,” he continued. “Folks that you would never know, the people you’re sitting next to, your friends, your family members, people you see every single day and have no idea that they’re impacted by something like this.”
McIntire was speaking at the inaugural event of “Concord Together,” a new organization formed by a group of young people in Concord to host monthly community discussions with guest speakers who are either working in the field of mental illness, or have personal experience with it.
On Tuesday night, McIntire was presenting, along with Scott Congdon, a mental health nurse practitioner at the state prison, Deb Baird from NAMI N.H. and Aly McKnight from New Futures.
McIntire said that many people think that the Concord Fire Department’s only role is to respond to car accidents and fires, or they get more psychiatric and behavioral calls than anything else. The second highest amount of calls are for drug overdoses, and then alcohol misuse, he said.
Often, those issues are happening at the same time, he said. However, the number of people suffering from anxiety or suicidal thoughts has gone down as Riverbend Community Mental Health’s mobile crisis unit was established, he said.
Before, the fire department’s only option was to transport people to a hospital emergency room, where they had the potential to wait for days and weeks without services. The mobile crisis unit is able to see people in the comfort of their homes, he said.
But while the number of calls for psychiatric concerns has decreased, drug calls have risen, McIntire said. In 2012, the Concord Fire Department responded to 45 overdose calls. In 2017, they responded to 253.
“It’s been a dramatic jump in a short amount of time,” he said.
McIntire said the availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, or Narcan, has saved quite a few lives, but they are finding that they need to use more to overcome the powerful drugs being used.
“When I was a brand new paramedic and we had an overdose call and we gave 2 milligrams of Narcan, that was a bad overdose – that was one of the worst overdoses you’d see,” he said. “We’re routinely nowadays pushing upwards of 6, 10, 12 milligrams of Narcan to overcome the fentanyl we’re seeing.”
McIntire said the Concord Fire Department is hoping to host Narcan trainings in the future for any citizen that wishes to learn how to use it. McKnight, of New Futures, said that Riverbend also has a mental health first aid course people can take to learn how to help a person in crisis.
McKnight said it’s important that people understand mental health conditions and substance use disorders as medical conditions, and not “moral failings.”
“They are not decisions that people make, they are not moral failings, they are medical conditions and they need to be treated as medical conditions. Historically, in the world in which we live, particularly in New Hampshire, they have not been.”
Rene Maher, 23, one of the founders of Concord Together, said the group is hoping to continue to have monthly meetings at the high school and grow their organization. The next event for Concord Together is scheduled for Dec. 11.
“We just think that by carving out spaces and creating spaces where we can have face-to-face contact, and share our ideas with somebody rather than just on Facebook, or something of that nature, that we can really attack this problem from a community standpoint,” he said.
Cam Alosa, 24, said the group was inspired to act after the loss of a few friends to suicide and drug overdose in the last year.
“We don’t necessarily look at what we’re doing as a novel idea or a necessarily a noble cause,” he said. “It’s more so just the natural first step to think about the multiple epidemics that our community is facing.”
(Leah Willingham can be reached at 369-3322, lwillingham@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @LeahMWillingham.)