Crisis

  • World Suicide Prevention Day is Also Hurricane Prep Day This Year for Me

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    We did all of those things in the 24-72 hours before the storm. The storm should make landfall sometime tomorrow. We’ve got our water stock, will get some ice, and have everything on chargers, batteries, and flashlights ready. Our cars are full of gas, cash on hand, and ice is getting picked up now. 

    If/when the power goes out tomorrow, we’ve got the necessities and a pretty good idea of where we will head on Thursday if it appears we’ll be without power for a few days. 

    Similarly, we don’t wait until someone is in a mental health crisis to figure out how to keep them alive. Plan. Know who to call, where to go, and what activities help you in crisis. Let the people in your life know the plan so they know what to do. 

  • |

    Recommending Some Podcast Episodes on the Mental Health of Young People

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Listen to both episodes. You’ll be challenged to think about youth mental health in a much broader sense. Hopefully, you will also see that these are not easy questions to answer and that existing in the world and planning for a future right now is hard. It’s no wonder that young people are struggling. It’s time we start taking serious steps toward making it less challenging for everyone and quit looking for a silver bullet that’ll fix it.

  • World Suicide Prevention Day 2021

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    So, the thing I want us to talk about this year is not just encouragement to call a hotline or to reach out to a friend for help, or even to tell our stories and erase the stigma around mental health issues. I want us to consider doing more than that. I want us, as a society, to figure out how to provide hope. As much value as there is in all of those other things if I can’t provide some hope that things will get better, that we are working and advocating for things to get better across all areas of our culture, then I can’t honestly say that there is a reason for someone to hope, and at the end of the day, the thing that truly prevented me from taking my own life when I was at my worst, was the hope that life wouldn’t always be that painful.

    As it turned out, my life wasn’t always that painful, and even in times of pain, I can look back and remember that.

    How do we provide that hope for others who have been beaten down and worn out with life right now? Where does their hope come from?