Thoughts After Watching “Shiny Happy People” – The Duggars Documentary
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Thoughts After Watching “Shiny Happy People” – The Duggars Documentary

ByMikeM Reading Time: 5 minutes

As shocking and dark as the details of the Duggar family and their relgious beliefs may be to many of us, it shouldn’t surprise us at all that they were so many people with a vested interest in the show, the religious organization, and the family were encouraged and even forced to gloss over the reality of what happened. If you’re shocked that anyone would go to such lengths to hide child abuse and ignore victims, you simply haven’t been paying attention. It goes on everywhere, and I hope the more cases like this one that we can bring to light, the more we’ll start to understand how horrible this is.

The Revolving Door of Mental Health Crisis Care – What Killed Jordan Neely Long Before that Subway Ride

The Revolving Door of Mental Health Crisis Care – What Killed Jordan Neely Long Before that Subway Ride

ByMikeM Reading Time: 3 minutes

Who knows, maybe in the current system there really was no hope for Jordan and many like him. That’s hardly a reason to celebrate his death and the person who killed him. It should be a wake-up call about how poor our current system is and a push for systemic change. Unfortunately, that’s a serious discussion that too many people in politics are not interested in having.

What Future Do Kids Have If Mental Health Care Bankrupts Their Families?

What Future Do Kids Have If Mental Health Care Bankrupts Their Families?

ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

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 bothered with figuring out ways to help them.

That’s not good enough.

Sharing – Nearly 1 in 10 American adults, 1 in 5 teens report having depression

Sharing – Nearly 1 in 10 American adults, 1 in 5 teens report having depression

ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

The mental health of Americans has been in decline for years. Don’t let the political talking points fool you into thinking this is pandemic related. Shutdowns, masks, social distancing, and all the other things that happened due to the pandemic did not cause a spike in mental health issues like depression out of nowhere. The spike was already happening.

Sharing – QAnon’s Obsession With SaveTheChildren Is Making It Harder To Save Kids From Traffickers

Sharing – QAnon’s Obsession With SaveTheChildren Is Making It Harder To Save Kids From Traffickers

ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

This is the reality, and why the lies are not harmless.

“In reality, child trafficking in the U.S. doesn’t look like a bunch of Hollywood and D.C. elites performing satanic rituals on children they stole from suburban playgrounds. Instead, kids who are sexually exploited are often poor, children of color, immigrants, or some combination of the three, and they’ve often been in the child welfare system or run away from home. In 2018, 1 in 7 kids who were reported as runaways to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were likely victims of child sex trafficking, according to UNICEF.

Sharing – Many Sex Offender Registries Are Rife With Errors

Sharing – Many Sex Offender Registries Are Rife With Errors

ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

The whole idea of a registry was to ease the minds of panicked parents so they would check the public registry, know that their lovely, upper-class neighborhood didn’t have any offenders in it, and go back to ignoring any talk of their kids being at risk for sexual abuse.

None of that has ever been true. As you read the story below, you’ll see that there are 25,000 offenders that law enforcement has completely lost track of, many of whom now live among poor communities where parents do not have the same resources that others do to keep their kids safe and have continued to offend.

What you also won’t see is that registries do nothing, absolutely nothing, to protect against offenders who haven’t been caught and convicted. That would be the vast majority of cases, by the way.