Shared Links (weekly) Sept. 29, 2024
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Psychiatry Won’t Solve Our Mental Health Crisis — Only Politics Can Do That
Why you should invite old friends, strangers, and people who don’t know each other to events– In a time when loneliness is more pervasive than ever, why not extend an invitation?
Most Americans with mental health needs don’t get treatment, report finds
Of course, he’s right. What he sees in the UK is the same thing I see from my “much less qualified but simply paying attention” seat in the US, and I’m sure many of you see where you live as well. Our current mental health resources are designed to help “fix” something wrong with us. I can’t say they even do that well, but at least that is the plan, and that plan makes sense for many mental health struggles.
It is only part of the picture, though. In all seriousness, how would the 6-8 therapist sessions a good insurance plan covers help someone escaping domestic abuse or trying to feed a family on a minimum wage job? How is the teenager being abused at home, bullied at school, and overwhelmed by the bleakness of what the world might look like when they are an adult supposed to find hope in one crisis text line conversation?
How will we provide hope and connection to people without first understanding their world and how they navigate it every day?
As I mentioned in another post recently, this is the question we should be asking when we see these stories of celebrities and mental health issues. What happens to the people who don’t have the resources to get the treatment that can help them. “We should not confront these challenges by placing more hurdles in…
In my opinion, your mental health is just as important as your physical health. Do your New Year’s resolutions ever include getting yourself mentally  healthy? Mental health matters. If you don’t attend to your mental and emotional needs, your quality of life suffers; your work suffers; your relationships suffer; your physical health suffers. What are…
I hope we can start to understand this better and provide a wider variety of tools to help with the wide variety of ways that mental health issues can manifest in different people.
I also hope we can start to understand that there is no one “right” way to treat our mental health issues, no magic solution that everyone can just go and get.
Lastly, I also hope that we can understand that my symptoms are not your symptoms, and the way something like depression can appear for one person versus another doesn’t make one more or less severe.