We have to face the fact that, as much as we might not openly admit it, we live in a society where kids with mental illness have very little hope, and we don’t care enough to change that. They, their parents, and their siblings are “others” that we’d rather not be bothered with. Societally, we’d rather they went away than be concerned with figuring out ways to help them.
That’s not good enough.
Of course, he’s right. What he sees in the UK is the same thing I see from my “much less qualified but simply paying attention” seat in the US, and I’m sure many of you see where you live as well. Our current mental health resources are designed to help “fix” something wrong with us. I can’t say they even do that well, but at least that is the plan, and that plan makes sense for many mental health struggles.
It is only part of the picture, though. In all seriousness, how would the 6-8 therapist sessions a good insurance plan covers help someone escaping domestic abuse or trying to feed a family on a minimum wage job? How is the teenager being abused at home, bullied at school, and overwhelmed by the bleakness of what the world might look like when they are an adult supposed to find hope in one crisis text line conversation?
How will we provide hope and connection to people without first understanding their world and how they navigate it every day?
This is true for trafficking, and it’s true for child sexual abuse, and it’s true for a variety of other ways in which people might try to take advantage of someone. People with poor mental health, poor connections to other people, and living in chaotic situations are more vulnerable. The best tool to prevent these things is to work on having fewer vulnerable people.
Mental health resources could go a long way.
We have gotten better at discussing mental health over the last couple of years, and one thing that has become clear is how broken that system is. How underfunded and under-resourced mental health services are and how many people are forced to go without them.
We wouldn’t know all this if we didn’t start talking about it. Hopefully, this increased attention brings about real change, not a return to not talking about it. The subject of child abuse is still considered a “downer” that people don’t want to discuss. So we don’t, and we don’t spend much time and energy as a society finding solid solutions. The problem just gets worse in silence, and the people living with that kind of trauma live in silence without the things they need.
There are a ton of links from there. What I found unique about the page is that they are tackling the issue from two different perspectives. One, how journalists should write about mental health and people dealing with mental illnesses or PTSD from traumatic events, and secondly, how to take care of their mental health as they cover war, disaster, etc.
Both are important topics, and I would love for anyone, from professional journalists covering a war to a blogger writing about mental health or sharing a story of trauma, to consider them. Please consider how we cover trauma and mental health, and how we make sure to take care of ourselves in the process.
The hard work is developing the proper resources for people who need help after the immediate crisis. That costs money. Money that a significant number of people in the US will balk at paying because it goes to “other people.” These are the same people who balk at paying taxes for schools when they don’t have kids or at higher insurance premiums, let alone the taxes necessary for things like Medicaid, that pay for people who “made poor health decisions.” So, rather than stand up to that kind of thinking, many politicians at the state and local levels will go along with that. They won’t even attempt to provide funds for mental health services.
Some will even go so far as to say those services are just propping up “weak” people who need to get over those issues.
At the end of the day, while we can point to the number of people who talk about mental health and are supported for talking about it, we cannot say we’ve eliminated the stigma associated with it until we all put our money where our mouth is and provide the help that people need.
Until then, I’m afraid that many people will learn lessons the hard way, that it’s easy to write off funding resources for “other people” until you or someone you love winds up being one of them.
