Medication

  • Houston Landing Series on Deadly Detention

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 3 minutes

    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.

  • When it Comes to Mental Health Finances Matter

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    What we see there is that mental health problems can create debt. When we cannot work, our healthcare costs skyrocket, and we can find ourselves in a poor financial situation. That poor financial situation creates more stress and emotional labor, contributing to mental health issues.

    Whether the mental health problem or financial struggle came first doesn’t matter. Once we are in the cycle, it will continue round and round.

    That’s what cycles do.

  • Sharing – On the Mental Health Conversation

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    I love the fact that her boss was just honest about his mental health issues, and the fact that he took antidepressants, and how much difference that made it her own ability to talk about mental health. Simply put, this has to be what we do. All of us who advocate for more mental health conversation, awareness, and resources, need to create a space where anyone, everyone, can share their own stories, and advocate for their own care, without fear of being judged for needing it.

  • What I learned from my husband’s suicide | Lori Prichard

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 3 minutes

    I saw this talk shared the other day and bookmarked it to go back and watch later. It’s a powerful talk given by Lori Prichard about her husband’s suicide. If you’ve not lived with depression, or lived close to someone dealing with it, you may have a hard time relating, but I want you to try, because I know how accurate this is. I’ve been depressed. I’ve lived with that bully inside of my own brain that told me every day how much better off people would be without me, and I managed to hide it and downplay it so that most people didn’t know anything was wrong at all, or as Lori put it, they let me get away with talking them out of any concerns.

  • Sharing – Antidepressant use in England soars as pandemic cuts counselling access

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    This is not great. Medication can be incredibly helpful, but it’s really not a “fix” for depression.

    “Lucy Schonegevel, the deputy campaigns director at the mental health charity Rethink, said there was a “big risk of antidepressants being prescribed with no support”, adding that such medications should “go hand in hand” with therapy.

    Her concerns were echoed by the mental health campaigner Natasha Devon, who said: “People are going to their GPs with symptoms of mental illness and being sent away with a bag of medication, having been put on an 18-month waiting list.””