Shared Links (weekly) Oct. 6, 2024
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“This week, mental health professionals are marking National Suicide Prevention Week, offering advice on how to respond to someone who may be on the verge of killing himself or herself.“You can make a difference, especially if you can get somebody to talk about it,” said Elsa Ronningstam, a psychoanalyst, McLean Hospital psychologist, and board member…
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?
I see this often in the workplace, where the constant refrain of “next steps” and the overwhelming need to stay on task can create huge problems for people, but we do it outside of work too, whether you want to talk about your side hustle, your hobby, or even something like social media. We spend…
I don’t claim to have all of the answers to the challenge of suicide prevention, but the basics are relatively straightforward. This research into teenagers shows us precisely what keeps people alive:
Despite high suicide risk, most teens can identify reasons to live, from family bonds to small future dreams – offering hope for prevention.
Friends mourn Steve Austin, former pastor and author who wrote about suicide and mental health
– I didn’t know Steve the way others did. I followed him on social media, read and shared some of his stuff, and will miss having that voice out here.
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I think back to my childhood and the sexual and physical violence I was subjected to. I struggle with anxiety because my brain is always going back to that time – a time when I was not safe! The things my brain learned then weren’t a failure of mental health; they were survival instincts. They were healthy reactions to an unsafe environment. My current challenge is unlearning them now that I am no longer in that unsafe environment. Asking me to do that while I was unsafe would have been dumb. The anxiety was trying to keep me alive.