I have often said the best defense against childhood sexual abuse is raising kids who have open, supportive adults in their lives because they aren’t as vulnerable and easily manipulated. It turns out that those same relationships are also improving their mental well-being. Let’s do more of that.
What we need as individuals and what we need on a given day can vary. If we know ourselves, though, we can use the mental health tools we have, including a day off, to our best advantage.
What I read in this matches what I see in real life. Some people spend a lot of time on social media doing things that are bad for their mental health. (Comparing their lives to the ultra-filtered images they see on social media, filling their feed with information that is bad for their mental health, etc.) while others use social media to connect with an online support network.
Given that, the calls for banning social media use for kids seem odd, but they are based on that being the easy thing. Blaming big tech will never be unpopular, and there is a possibility that some people might be better off not using social media as much.
The more I see research like this, the more I become convinced that one of the most significant losses many sexual abuse survivors suffer has to do with how complicated touch becomes for us as adults.
Once I was public about my abuse, it became obvious to me that anyone I was going to be involved with romantically probably needed to know about my past sooner rather than later. Maybe not all the details upfront, but the fact that I am a survivor usually came out early. There was no reason not to share that information with someone who I was going to be in a romantic relationship with because that trauma impacted so many little things about me and how I acted in that relationship.
They need to be better about that if we are going to make any kind of dent in the mental healthcare accessibility problem. Online therapy can be a difference maker if it can help people quicker and cheaper and with the same effectiveness. Those are the keys right now to improving the care system for all of us.
