This is truth:
“Arming yourself with available resources can help you start a productive conversation about mental health or addiction so you can better support someone who may need help”
The article has a whole bunch of links and information. Worth a look.
Facing a Mental Health Challenge? There’s a Resource for That
If you want to protect children, you need to know where they are being approached, and how. So I share this not as a news story so much as an informational tool. “The Covid-19 predator handbook contained details about how to coerce children online to share sexual images and videos of themselves, she said. “The…
Maybe the most interesting aspect of meeting survivors is how many ways this happened to all of us. I’ve yet to meet a survivor who has said that they tell people about their trauma and are always believed, taken seriously, and encouraged to continue telling their story. It’s not that they don’t occasionally hear that from an individual, but it is always the exception instead of the rule.
“It sounds simple; just get a hug a day and you’ll be releasing oxytocin all over the place and you’ll enjoy steady health. The catch is that the above study was done with healthy adults–presumably adults who did not suffer from a major emotional disorder. But what happens if you are unhealthy? People who suffer…
See, it’s easy to tell people who live pretty comfortable lives what a difference some time in nature can make for their anxiety or other issues. People living in poverty or dealing with racism every day might not get the same benefit from an afternoon hike. We don’t know what impact it would have, because we’ve mainly only been testing in relatively wealthy countries with relatively wealthy subjects.
We should be considering all of the societal and environmental obstacles that exist for people when it comes to mental health challenges. I suspect it’s only very recently that we’ve begun to do that, so any of our typical “advice” about self-care might not be appropriate until we’ve done more.
The site is available here:
https://www.covidmentalhealthsupport.org/
It appears to be limited to the US, despite the fact that it lets you type in another country. I just showed no countries showing up in the list other than the US regardless of what I typed, but maybe at some point it will add more resources, or if you know of a similar resource in your country, feel free to drop a link in the comments.
I, for one, was sexually abused by an older boy. Not a stranger. Someone in my family. Many other men I know were abused by a family member, a member of the clergy, a coach, or some other trusted person known to their parents. I also went into my 20s planning to never tell anyone. I know many men go through most of their lives never planning to tell anyone. I was lucky to find other men who did talk about it, and helped me realize first that what happened to me was abuse and that someone would believe me if I spoke up.
I would argue that most men have never had that. Thus, they don’t show up in any statistics about sexual abuse. The sexual abuse of minors is chronically underreported and is likely to get worse as society continues to push victims to “move on” instead of speaking out. We need more spaces to discuss CSA, not fewer.
