We talk a lot in the advocate community about not being alone with mental health issues. I try to encourage anyone to see others who are dealing with the same issues around mental health and childhood abuse and recognize that they are not in this alone. There are many of us out here dealing with the same thing. Many in the US and other countries are alone in accessing care. That should shame us all.
This is why I look for the definition when I read anything about being fully healed. What does being healed mean to you? Is your definition possible? A definition that includes the abuse having zero impact on who you are today? Because that’s not realistic. But it also doesn’t mean you can’t go on to have a healed life while acknowledging that it is still part of who you are.
It was a traumatic event; they became part of us. They don’t have to rule us, though. That’s healed.
What do we have to offer those kids beyond a message about how their already-high ACE score likely means they have a lifetime of poor outcomes to look forward to? It turns out we have a lot to offer them. By creating positive experiences, we can start to undo the damage and create a preventative buffer to help avoid further adverse events.
But what is the least harmful way to deal with that? What is the least harmful way to inform kids of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza? What is the least harmful way to prepare kids for the natural disasters that seem only to get worse each year?
I don’t know. What I do know is that dealing with all of this is hard and only part of the causes of increased needs for youth mental health. Our current mental health system failed many people for years when the need wasn’t this high. What we are doing isn’t working. Continuing to do the same thing won’t work. Fighting against increased funding and availability of resources won’t work. Hiding our heads in the sand and saying, “not my kid,” won’t work. This is a society-wide problem that will require societal change. I am not sure we are willing to make those changes, but an entire generation of kids will pay the price for that unwillingness.
We have to address societal issues that cause harm. Politicians who don’t address both the lack of mental health resources and the various political issues that actively harm the mental health of all of us don’t deserve our vote. If you consider yourself a mental health advocate, consider how your representatives have voted and where they stand on these issues. Have they cut mental health funding, opposed mental health support in schools, or supported laws that cause active mental harm to some segments of the population?
Consider that before you go to the voting booth this year.
As the article explains, there is no federal law against this in the US. There are some state laws, but they’re not very effective. The problem is that we’ve always treated sexual abuse materials as criminal because, as the saying goes, behind every photo is a child being abused. With deepfakes, though, the abuse isn’t happening. So when a teen girl is the subject of deepfake porn, she was never sexually assaulted, so there’s no crime.
There’s a lot of harm, though. In the case of a celebrity, it might be reputational harm. In the case of teenagers, that fake can turn into blackmail, bullying, and all the mental health issues that go along with that. (The same is true of adults, but we know how vulnerable teens are to this and how this too often ends.)
