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Mental Health Knows No Group Identity, but Our Stressors are Not All The Same
Mental health issues can strike anyone, anywhere. We wouldn’t see the numbers of people dealing with depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. if mental health issues were only a result of group identity. They aren’t. People you know are included in those numbers, whether they’ve told you or not. While that fact should remind us that mental…
Sharing – The ACEs Questionnaire Is Missing These Types of Trauma
When I think about Monika’s point, and my own look at the numbers, I repeat what I said back then, when looking at one individual, the ACE survey is never the whole story. There are lots of childhood experiences that go unaccounted for, there are individual levels of resilience that are not accounted for, and there are early interventions that are not considered. One traumatic experience equals one traumatic experience in the final number, regardless of whether that experience was immediately followed up with support and maybe even therapy, or if it was ignored and maybe even repeated. There are numerous factors beyond simply answering more than 4 questions yes and assuming you’re an addict, or not answering enough questions yes and assuming you aren’t. It is much more complicated than that.
The ACE information is important though because it points us back to that childhood trauma and says “what happened to you?” when treating an individual for depression, or addiction, so that we can include that in our healing. What we want to be careful with is turning it into a blunt instrument when there is still so much not being accounted for within it.
French Catholic Church News Reminds Us Again – Boys Get Sexually Abused
Actually, I think it usually takes something like this, or the scandal in the Boy Scouts, etc, to remind people that oh yeah, sometimes it’s boys who are targeted en masse for sexual abuse. I suspect we don’t often think about it because, as it turns out, many men don’t feel like they can talk about having been abused.
That’s why it was a bit heartbreaking to read Phil Goldstein’s recent opinion piece:
French Catholic Church abuse report highlights the special toll faced by boys
As Phil points out, for a variety of reasons, male survivors tend not to talk about being an abuse victim, and the numbers back that up.
Link – Suicide Survivors and How They Coped – Suicide Prevention and Help
This is really interesting. We should spend some time looking at the people who didn’t go through with it, and why. But some stories about suicide are hopeful: For every person who dies by suicide each year, another 280 people think seriously about suicide but do not kill themselves, according to data from the CDC…
Link – Stop Burying Our Heads In The Sand
Proof again, as if we needed any, that child abuse exists across all of our borders and within all cultural groups. No one segment of society need not be concerned about it, and until we can admit that it’s not happening to “other people”, we will not find any serious solutions. According to a July…
