Similar Posts
Sharing – Number of Americans Headed to ER for Suicidal Thoughts, Self-Harm Keeps Rising
This isn’t new information for regular readers around here, what April says in the article below is a problem that just keeps getting worse. “April Foreman, an executive committee member of the board of directors at the American Association of Suicidology and a suicide prevention coordinator at the VA Health System in Baton Rouge, La.,…
Connection Matters – An Example
As I read this, I couldn’t help but compare it to the hundreds of stories where the opposite was true. People are so afraid of saying the wrong thing or so uncomfortable with the idea of mental health issues that they run the other way. They disconnect from someone who so desperately needs connection. Someone they love is feeling all that embarrassment and pain and no longer has anyone to connect to and remind them of their value, their humanness.
As the title of Elizabeth’s post says, we need each other.
Are You Doom-Scrolling the News and Want Something Else?
This collection of articles on Pocket might be a place to look for something else to do. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-to-destress-from-the-news Let’s face it, we’ve spent months dealing with bad news, uncertainty, and well, just kind of life being a mess in so many ways. Far too many people are feeling stuck in anxiety and depression, with no…
Sharing – Why It’s Okay to Not Be Okay: Tips for Telling Someone You’re Struggling
I cannot emphasize enough how difficult it is to talk about our struggles. We should never take that lightly. We should also never take lightly how much trust and vulnerability it takes for someone to choose us as the person they want to talk to about their mental health.
Don’t take that for granted and please do not take that with anything less than the utmost seriousness. Dismissing someone who is talking about their mental health is a great way to make sure they don’t talk to anyone ever again.
Don’t be the person who causes that.
Sharing – 988 call centers struggling to hire people to answer the phones.
Creating a new number was the easy part. Similar to raising awareness because it’s necessary, it’s essential, but if there is no one there to provide the help we encourage people to reach out for, it’s not nearly enough. Here’s hoping these state and local organizations can find and train people to provide the necessary help during these calls. That’s only a start, of course. We still have so much work to do to make that help accessible to everyone who needs it.
In some ways, this struggle to staff the hotline is a microcosm of the entire mental health field right now. We need a lot of resources that just aren’t there right now. Can we figure out a way to get change that?