The bottom line? We can all play a role in enhancing mental health outcomes for ourselves and those around us. We change the world one solid relationship at a time, and we build those through effective communication.
To believe we can solve the teen mental health crisis by forcing kids off social media and doing nothing about all these other things is foolish.
There have been some efforts to make health care more accessible in rural areas, but I’m not sure that we’ve done nearly as much when it comes to mental health and addiction treatment. I’ve read too many stories of people needing to travel 100 miles or more to see a therapist, or get a prescription for medication, let alone finding a rehab clinic with an opening. Throw in a system that too often forgets that they exist, or uses them as pawns in power grabs instead of trying to meet the needs of these communities, and it’s no wonder that many would be feeling helpless in the face of addiction and mental health issues.
That’s a problem. Building more jails isn’t going to solve it. Creating processes that help identify inmates with mental health issues but not the resources to immediately get them into treatment isn’t helping either. The numbers will just get higher. The only thing that will help is getting more resources to the people who need them. But we don’t. I believe the biggest reason we don’t is that we don’t see homeless people with mental health issues who run into legal problems as people who are worth the effort.
Frankly, this does sound like a common struggle for childhood abuse survivors. It also sounds a lot like some of the symptoms of being neurodivergent. So, I guess the question is, does a history of childhood maltreatment equal an increase in the likelihood of being neurodivergent? Or does this personality trait simply have a lot in common with other types of neurodivergent traits yet is caused by surviving early trauma?
ake describes the risk of these kids growing up to be people pleasers. I’d go one further. Not only did I grow up as a people pleaser, but I also had zero sense of self. Without someone to react to and to become the person they wanted me to be, I was no one. I tell people this often but I spent more time in therapy figuring out who I am than I spent trying to process childhood trauma and that was a direct result of growing up as this chameleon kid. My entire personality was based on fitting what was needed by other people, starting with my alcoholic father and the person who sexually abused me, right through to friends and my first wife. I was what I thought they wanted me to be. When my therapist started asking about what I wanted to be, I was blank. There was nothing there.
