I’ve seen many mentions recently about anxiety being a normal response to our current world. This is also a contradiction to what much of the self-help and positivity industry would tell us. Spend any time on social media and you’ll see plenty of messages about gratitude, finding joy and purpose, and the silver lining in any situation.
What you won’t hear is that there are situations that SHOULD make you angry, anxious, and sad. But there are.
Casey calls out those of us who would say “love is love” and support our LGBTQ friends and family members without standing up and doing what we can to actually make this world safer for them. I’ll go one further. If we want to call ourselves mental health advocates and advocates for trauma survivors we need to do what we can to push for a world that is safe for everyone. We can’t heal when we don’t feel safe, and for too many people in this world, they have no reason to feel safe.
We need to advocate for a world that is safe for them too.
Turns out that doing things we like is good for our mental health, so it’s not selfish to make time for them.
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.
