Podcast: Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting – How Stigma is Everywhere
Black lives matter. Black mental health matters too
“Black people are 7 times more likely to live in areas with limited access to mental health care.” – poor areas don’t have therapist offices.
52 Mental Health Resources for Disabled People, POC, LGBTQ Folks, and More
23 Mental Health Books for Anyone Who’s Going Through It Right Now
This is what matters. Having people around you with the knowledge and willingness to support you. Far too many survivors, youth and adults, have never had that. We’ve failed them as a society that values our own discomfort with the topic over supporting people we claim to care about.
Until we stop doing that and start connecting with anyone who has experienced childhood trauma, we’ll continue to see all of the negative effects writ large.
We’ve talked before about jails being a bad place to treat mental health issues, yet we see so many people ending up there because their conditions spiral without any proper treatment. We’re seeing the same thing with children in emergency rooms as well: An increasing number of children are showing up in U.S. emergency rooms…
Laura’s reasoning for reading books is pretty sound: “A lot of them also show that the darkness is not only survivable but manageable in the long term. It’s one thing to say, “I got past this and you can, too.” It’s an entirely different thing to acknowledge that the journey may be less about getting…
Pope Benedict XVI has issued an apology for the decades of child abuse inflicted by priests or nuns in Catholic-run institutions. The apology has naturally divided opinion among the faithful and the survivors. Altar Boy author Andrew Madden was one commentator with the view that the actions of the church when dealing with allegations and…
There is a direct link between the growing prison population and the lack of mental health resources. The only difference is that we can scare people into paying to build more prisons and keep “dangerous people” away from us. It’s much harder to convince people to invest in prevention through mental health treatment, even if that would be much more effective in protecting everyone.
I also want you to remember that, as far as I can tell, this study was done regarding adult women being harassed. Imagine how much the victim-blaming in those cases would impact a sexual abuse victim? As a child, maybe we didn’t have any chance to make an accusation, but as an adult we could, except look at what happens to people who come forward years later? Why would I put myself through that trauma?
And if you’re a male victim of sexual abuse, or even assault as an adult? Yeah, you get the extra burden of proving you didn’t want it too.
This all stems from a complete misunderstanding of trauma, and the dynamics involved in going public with our stories. To too many people in society, if we don’t report it right when it happens, then coming forward later is just proof that it didn’t happen and we have some other motive for making the accusation.
Until that goes away, there will continue to be millions of silent victims, and who knows how many predators not being found out.
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