GEIS-新闻详情

This #GivingTuesday is all about helping our nation’s other crisis — mental illness

2021-11-30 00:00:00.0 华盛顿邮报-华盛顿特区原网页

We’re still uncertain and anxious after 20 months of ever-changing stages of pandemic lockdown and now the ominous-sounding omicron is casting recovery into the shadows. More than 750,000 people in the United States have died of covid-19. Millions of Americans are still struggling to afford food and rent while millions of others watched their stock portfolios swell. Our homicide rates are rising. After 26 million people took to the streets to demand justice for Black Americans, insurrectionists stormed and defiled the very symbol of our democracy.

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Of course we’re anxious and depressed.

And when we do work up the courage to ask for help, it’s not widely available.

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Judith Kuriansky hit a wall when she finally decided to treat the trauma that’s been haunting her for two decades.

“I’m in crisis now. I need to talk to someone now,” said Kuriansky, a psychologist who worked “the pit” that remained after the World Trade Center towers fell on Sept. 11. We talked just before the 20th anniversary of that day and she was full of anxiety.

“They told me it would take three to four months to assign me someone!” she said.

This year, my annual Giving Tuesday column is an all-mental-health special edition. Because that’s the common, bipartisan thread I see connecting everything our nation has endured the past two years.

Two-thirds of primary care doctors who spoke to researchers from the Steinberg Institute said they couldn’t find mental health specialists to refer their patients to when it was clear they needed help. At least 135 million Americans don’t have access to mental health care, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

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Lockdown can be calamitous for teens whose home lives are already tough

We are in a crisis that affects teens who lost milestones while locked in their bedrooms; veterans who watched troops withdraw from the war in which their friends died; police officers who were attacked by their fellow Americans; and Black mothers who watched that footage of George Floyd calling for his mom while dying, over and over again.

Mental illness doesn’t discriminate.

But access to care is different.

Only 30 percent of Black adults with mental health conditions receive treatment each year, while the U.S. average remains 43 percent, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

And that’s why the first of five nonprofits that work to treat Americans’ mental health I’m offering up work specifically to provide equity in care.

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All of them are overwhelmed, overburdened, in need and welcoming your #GivingTuesday donations.

The Black Women’s Health Imperative

Black women suffered repeated trauma for months now, as covid-19 hit them hard and they watched a nation slowly come to understand the institutional racism they’ve been fighting.

Yes, even in small, single-stoplight towns, they are saying his name

This kind of stress isn’t new. “This is obviously a long-standing issue,” said Linda Goler Blount, president and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, which aims to increase the overall health of Black women and especially to provide equitable access to mental health professionals.

The organization recently added Barbara Brown, a D.C. psychologist who runs a network of mental health practices, to their board. A donation to this organization, which is based in both D.C. and Atlanta, will help fund research, policy advocacy and programs.

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Active Minds

“Oftentimes, high school students are not really taught to recognize that what they’re dealing with might be an actual struggle that they can’t just pull themselves out of, but it’s an .？.？. actual diagnosable disorder that needs and deserves help and treatment,” Alison Malmon told The Washington Post when she saw the toll the pandemic was taking on teens.

More than 2.5 million youth in America have severe, major depression and more than 60 percent of them are untreated, according to Mental Health America.

Malmon, whose brother took his life more than two decades ago when he was in college, founded a nationwide network of support groups, the kind she believes would’ve helped her brother. Studies show they work. There are more than 600 across the nation — check for your kids’ school or your alma mater, because it may have one — that you can donate to directly to provide space and a pathway toward services.

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Give an Hour

There is no shortage of reasons service in the military, time spent seeing things unimaginable to so many Americans, would trigger mental health issues. But when an Air Force sergeant killed himself this month at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, it became clear how hard it may be for them to ask for and get help. Give an Hour is a network of volunteers who have been offering free and confidential counseling — away from official records and skeptical commanders — to the military community since 2005. A donation would help the network expand its services.

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

Started in 1979 by two Wisconsin moms whose sons were both diagnosed with schizophrenia, NAMI is one of the largest and most comprehensive organizations to address mental health in the nation. They work on a national level, as well as in communities with small support groups and access to mental health care.

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Northern Virginia Family Service

The trauma some migrants have suffered may be unimaginable to most Americans. They walked hundreds of miles, were sometimes raped or tortured, and waited for days in the hot sun for answers to their paperwork. They left everything behind to come to a new land that didn’t always open their arms to them. And now they’re trying to find jobs and navigate citizenship forms. There is a unique group of counselors in the service’s Multicultural Center who comprehend what they’ve been through and what they face. A donation to the group will help it expand its services to our newest Americans.

Twitter: @petulad