There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in. – Archbishop Desmond Tutu*
It’s as if someone took my thoughts and put them in a perfect analogy. It’s the perfect tagline for the types of changes I hope to inspire with this blog and mental healthcare is at the top of my list of priorities.
Addiction, violence & suicide are 3 major problems we have in our society and hell, we aren’t even trying to pull these people out of the river, let alone addressing why they are falling in. The main focus is on what they find in the river once they fall in (drugs/weapons). I’d be willing to bet a great deal of these people fall in due to either a straight up mental illness or traumas they’ve experienced that had a negative effect on their mental health.
It’s easy for a lot of people to blame an addict for becoming an addict and turn their backs on the issue. It’s easy to hate someone who commits an act of violence, especially in cases like mass shootings. It’s easy to say committing suicide is selfish. In doing so we are making the problem worse. We can’t ignore these people. If mental healthcare were more accessible & affordable, if it were understood and treated as the medical condition it is, then maybe we could keep these people from falling in the river in the first place.
CHECKUPS
Growing up we have annual appointments with our PCP’s to make sure we are physically healthy, get vaccines to prevent deadly diseases and to make sure our overall development is on par. Why do we not do this for our mental health as well? At the end of the day, that’s at least equally as important. It’s our brains and the connections (or lack thereof) it makes. It’s chemical imbalances.
Take Stephen Hawking for example. ALS ravaged his body, his physical. But his mind? He had one of the most brilliant minds in history. He survived 50 years longer than the average survival rate of around 4 years with nothing but his brain, his mental. Look at all he did, all he inspired, in those 50 years with, what I feel is, the worst physical condition a person could have.
My point is that a person can survive, even if they have no physical control of their body. There’s no surviving if a person is brain dead. Our brain health, our mental is vital to our life and our humanity. It should be cared for and checked on a regular basis along with our physical.
ACCESS & AFFORDABILITY
Minors should have access to therapists at no cost, with or without getting their parents involved. Schools need to have therapists on staff that students have unlimited access to. Teachers should be trained to identify students in need.
I can already hear people in my head getting fired up over this idea but this is one thing that I really don’t give a shit about what parents have to say. In many cases the parents are the reason kids need help in the first place. Do you think a parent that abuses their child is going to take them to therapy to help them deal with the trauma of it? Hell no. Then you have parents that don’t want to accept that their child may have a mental health condition and that does nothing but hurt the child. We need to identify kids in need of help and get them the help they need by any means necessary.
Our brains are not fully developed until the age of 25. What happens in our lives before then affects how our brain develops. For people like me that had traumatic childhoods, it can wreak havoc on us and the rest of our lives if we don’t get help.
Trying to identify what needs addressed & how to do so can take years. There are problems some are born with and problems that are caused by circumstances and/or events. For most people, therapy is a minimum of $30 a visit, if you have insurance. So going once a week at $30 per session would add up to $1560 a year. At a minimum. That’s just for therapy. If you require medication, or multiple ones which is the case a lot, you are also required to see either a psychiatrist or your PCP every 3 months for med check-ups and refills. That’s probably a minimum of $120 a year in co-pays for most people (usually more if you choose to see a psychiatrist which is the better choice). Then there’s the cost of the meds themselves. On top of that, there is now a law requiring doctors to drug test their patients that are on controlled substances to make sure they are taking them (not selling them) & the patient gets billed for that as well (at least I have).
I am not a trained expert on any of this. I’m just giving my perspective as I see it and from my own personal experiences. Everything has a starting point. Lets build up from here.
*Credit to Glennon Doyle and her book Untamed for this quote