How Tara Wray Used Photography To ‘Process Fear And Uncertainty’
Stress in America study: How Americans can support mental health
How men are finding mental health support with digital tools
7 Books to Supercharge Your Personal Growth
Boxer Who Was Raped As 10-Year-Old Says Support Was ‘Life-Saving’
Breaking the silence: How to talk to your kids about sexual assault, consent
Why Your Reaction to a Child’s Abuse Disclosure Matters
But, if you had a broken arm, you wouldn’t hop online and talk to your life coach. You’d go see a professional to have it treated. There’s a reason for that, just as there should be a reason why, when someone needs mental health advice, they should get it from professionals, and not random people on the internet.
It’s true that most people dealing with bipolar or schizophrenia are not dangerous, and it’s also true that someone in the middle of a psychotic episode is not going to seem very “normal” to us. Unfortunately, what that often means is that people will call the police, because who else is there to call? Then, the police, who are trained to deal with dangerous criminals, act accordingly, because, again, they have no other training. The best option for them is to get the person off the streets and way from the public, which means jail, because, once more, there’s probably not anywhere else to take them.
Now they are part of the criminal justice system. A place with almost no mental health treatment available.
Of course, as the article below also reminds us, that’s only if they actually survive all of these encounters, which is, far too often, not the case.
Introduction to Tanya J. Peterson, Author of ‘Mental Health for the Digital Generation’
Toxic Childhood? 10 Lessons You Must Unlearn in Adulthood
Five tips to keep your children safe online
How To Be Intentional With Social Media Use
Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness
Here’s What Happens When Social Workers, Not Police, Respond To Mental Health Crises
Former Gymnast Sarah Klein Discusses Coach John Geddert’s Sex Abuse Charges
Look, I get it, you tried something and it helped you, or you’ve seen it help someone else. Clearly, you are excited about the possibility of helping others, but you’re forgetting something. You’re forgetting that the person you are sharing this advice with, isn’t you.
When you come walking into a conversation with friends, or especially into online communities with statements like the ones above, the message you are actually sending is “Gee, fixing this is easy, you’re just doing it wrong”.
Imagine using those actual words towards someone you barely know. You wouldn’t, would you? At least if you’re a decent human being, you wouldn’t. But you are totally willing to take your beliefs, your own experience, and completely railroad another person’s current reality with it, you are doing something awfully similar. In a moment of emotional vulnerability, you have come in, guns blazing, with the suggestion that all of this pain they are in, and all of this struggling they are going through, should have been easy to avoid.
Behavioral issues in school, getting in trouble, and wham! Instead of mental health care, you’re a criminal case. We do it to adults all the time, why would we not see it the same way with kids? Especially kids without the family means to get private care and assistance?
This is what we do, and we need to figure out something else. The criminal justice system is not mental health care.
