Popular culture depicts the holiday season as a happy time when everyone is surrounded by friends and family.

Joe Mahoney, executive director of the Gaiser Center, said these depictions can provoke melancholy for people already struggling with feelings of sadness, depression or anxiety. These feelings can trigger symptoms of addiction in some, according to Mahoney.

“Our clients express there are certain holidays in their past that haven't been great,” he said. “Maybe there was no food on the table, maybe they were in jail... Our clients have experienced dissonance and their natural coping mechanism would be turning to a substance.”

Multiple treatment and inpatient centers in Butler County offer recovery programs for addiction and mental illness, which continue through the entire year.

Mahoney said that even people who haven't found themselves in addiction or depressive states in the past can feel negative emotions during this time of year, which can have lasting impacts on one's health.

“Our therapists do a lot of processing groups processing holiday stressors with the clients,” he said. “We know society at large presents as the happiest times; that's not the case for most people, whether they are struggling with grief and loss, job loss, there are people struggling and seeing portrayals (that) kind of aggravate that stress.”

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