Your Mental Health and Emotional Needs are Priority #1

We are all feeling overwhelmed and frayed these days. Our nerves are on high alert, we lash out easily and we turn to chemicals to numb the pain.

I recently spoke with almost 100 Directors, social workers and front line staff who provide after school and community development services for youth and families across New York City.  

What I heard was not a surprise. But the truths that were shared with me cannot be ignored. Kids are struggling with frustration and pain. They’ve fallen behind in both academic and emotional learning.  The adults they trust are struggling with their own worries and pain, impairing them from providing the assurance that kids need to feel like things will be alright. 

There aren’t enough social workers and counselors in schools, despite promises to hire more.  Visits with clinical professionals involves long waits and cash payments that many cannot afford.

The global pandemic didn’t spare anyone. Those of us who survived with our lives are still suffering the lingering psychological impact of the past three years.

You and I and our families and friends and neighbors and co-workers all deserve more compassion and care right now. Our individual and collective psyches deserve attention. 

In honor of National Mental Health Awareness Month and in remembrance of my brother Mike who took his own life 3 years ago and my brother Rob who has suffered a life of self-medication with alcohol and drugs, I want everyone to know prevention, early identification, and intervention, and integrated services work. Don’t wait for a crisis. #B4Stage4!   https://mhanational.org/b4stage4-philosophy  

Do yourself, your kids and your loved ones a huge favor and join a 1-day training on Mental Health First Aid. https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/

Learn more here https://www.nami.org/Get-Involved/Awareness-Events/Mental-Health-Awareness-Month

Conditions for shelter: whose rules are they?

Ask an economist, an investment banker or a policy maker and the solution to homelessness is by increasing the supply of affordable housing.  But even if we decided to invest the money to build more very low income housing and keep policies that protect the inventory we already have, we’d still always have dysfunctional people living doubled up, sleeping rough and moving from place to place for a place to sleep and store belongings.  Why?  Because housing instability is not just a symptom of economic vulnerability.  It’s what happens to people who don’t play by society’s rules.

Untreated mental illness and emotional disorders, self-medication with mind-numbing chemical substances that overtake the individual’s judgement and ability to self-manage are the real causes of homelessness.  Urges and choices that involve illegal activities, sometimes violence, and often, a disregard for the impact of one’s choices on others (family members, neighbors, community supports and random strangers) are what perpetuate homelessness for the vast majority.  I don’t mean to say it’s deserved or that we should accept this reality without trying to solve the underlying human challenges.

I know what I say sounds harsh and unsympathetic.  But I don’t say it lightly.  I say it because I have a brother who has spent 30 years living a rebellious life revolving around alcohol and drugs include crack and crystal meth and at the age of 55, he is barely hanging on to a shelter with a bed he can call his, regular meals and place to store his meagre belongings. 

My brother has had jobs in between stints in jail, rehab and hospitals and while holding down jobs he paid rent regularly. But he also lost homes due to his choices and he knows the rules our family has laid down: if you continue your uncontrolled drinking, you cannot live with us.

I recently found out he has been heavily medicated for bi-polar diagnosis.  He has spent the past 16 months talking about wanting to die.  And he’s been in and out of 4 rehab centers, sober houses and hospitals including an involuntary psychiatric stint.   

He’s also been very fortunate to have been placed in half-way houses for those in recovery or who are post-incarceration.  He usually shares a room, gets 3 meals a day and must respect house rules and participate in resident responsibilities for a nominal monthly rent that he can afford on SSDI or whatever savings he has accrued.  And even when he’s broken the rules – drinking himself to oblivion and ending up passed out on the street where an ambulance recovers him, he’s generally given the option for redemption by these shelters. 

But my brother doesn’t like rules. He never has, since he was a kid.  And for once, I sympathize with his choice to not follow rules.  The last place he stayed was a therapeutic home for recovering substance abusers as well as for child traffic survivors.  They had a different set of rules.  Operated by a Christian organization, their rules required him to carry a “Jesus Saves” sign outside near his shelter.  He refused this requirement so ended up back on the street.