• Sharing – Psychological and Physiological Power of Validation

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    Note what it says, words like listening and acceptance. Note also what it doesn’t say, like anything about fixing things or changing their feelings, etc.

    I talk often on here about simply being there. Sitting with someone who is struggling. Validation is all about that, and as you can read further, validating someone is maybe one of the best things you can do to keep open lines of communication, help them feel valued, and not dismiss their emotions.

  • Sharing – America’s Lack of Bereavement Leave Is Causing a Grief Crisis

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 3 minutes

    So people who are grieving do it privately. They barely function through the workday and then go home and grieve by themselves. They are left to process grief without any community and the support that provides. They are left to feel like there is something wrong with them because they still miss their loved ones as if that is somehow not normal.

    It is normal, we don’t simply forget the people we lose or the tragedies we experience and then move on. It sticks with you. You feel it again on birthdays and holidays, in places where you are reminded of them when you want to pick up the phone and tell them some exciting news. That doesn’t just go away after a set amount of time.

    We should stop pretending that it should and start making sure everyone has some space to grieve, no matter how long it’s been.

  • Sharing – Just how useful is childhood therapy?

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Unfortunately, whether therapy is effective for your child, or for yourself as an adult, depends on a number of factors. Finding someone you can trust is an obvious one, and sometimes a real struggle. Elsewhere in the article, Melinda talks about the child not currently being in a traumatic situation, notably one interviewee who was seeing a therapist for depression while also being sexually abused at home. She knew she could talk about that, so the therapy was doomed from the start.

    Sometimes I believe we look at mental health treatments like therapy and dismiss them because “it didn’t work” without considering all of the outside factors that can influence whether it works or not.

  • Youth Mental Health – A Crisis, but Ending Pandemic Rules Won’t End the Crisis

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 3 minutes

    There’s been a lot of talk about youth mental health during the pandemic, including a number of prominent voices raising the alarm about this crisis. There have been almost as many voices suggesting that ending things like lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and just getting “back to normal” will fix this mental health crisis.

    I am not one of those voices.

    Now let me be clear, I’m not saying that the pandemic hasn’t played a number on mental health for all of us, it clearly has. But, the crisis in mental health for everyone, but especially young people, existed long before COVID-19.

  • Sharing – What American Mental Health Care Is Missing

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    We actually know the things that can offer hope, we just don’t have a system that can deliver them. Our system is broken, the medical community can offer medicine and some limited treatment options but the day-to-day support and the work to reach a state of something more than symptom reduction doesn’t actually exist for most people.

    This has to change. Go read more of what he has to say, I think for many of you it will seem familiar, but maybe provide some hope that we are not alone in seeing it.

    Now if we can just find enough of us to care enough to fix it. We should all want to, mental health issues will happen to someone we all know and care about, eventually. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to offer a system that does not involve homelessness and prison time for far too many?