COVID-19 Advocacy

COVID-19 Advocacy: Help people with mental health conditions

Covid-19 Crisis

During the COVID-19 crisis, NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), a nonpartisan organization, is asking the public to support their effort to convince the U.S. Senate to:

1. Remove barriers to mental health treatment. People need ways to manage existing mental health conditions and maintain mental wellness while reducing their exposure to the coronavirus. To do this, Congress should:

• Eliminate all barriers to widely implementing telehealth in all public and private health plans and encourage all health plans to provide extended supplies and/or mail order refills of prescriptions. Both actions will help people with mental illness avoid risk of exposure to COVID-19.

• Approve funding for Emergency Response Grants at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to assist states in continuing to provide treatment for people with mental health conditions and substance use disorders.

2. Promote coverage for health and mental health care. People with mental health conditions are often uninsured or face barriers to getting needed treatment and supports. These challenges are even greater during a crisis. To address this, Congress should:

• Immediately launch a special enrollment period for commercial health insurance in the Marketplace (HealthCare.gov) to make sure people have access to affordable, quality health care coverage.

• Require the use of “presumptive eligibility,” which allows certain providers like hospitals and clinics to enroll people in Medicaid that they believe meet eligibility criteria.

• Ensure free COVID-19 testing and treatment for everyone, including people who are uninsured.

3. Ensure safe housing for people with severe mental illness. Many people with severe mental illness experience homelessness or housing insecurity and are uniquely vulnerable to being exposed to the virus and outbreaks in shelters or encampments. With the loss of steady income, many more individuals are also at risk of losing housing. Congress must act by:

• Providing $5 billion to serve people who are homeless and help them stay safe and healthy during this emergency.

• Approving an additional $5 billion to provide rapid rehousing for people who are at immediate risk of becoming homeless and funding for rental assistance to help low-income renters weather this crisis.

• Putting a temporary stop on evictions to ensure that renters and homeowners maintain stable housing during this crisis.

4. Support nonprofits’ capacity to serve. The economic impact of this crisis will also touch charitable organizations like NAMI organizations and our partners. Nonprofits need support to meet greater demand and fill important gaps during this time. To assist, Congress should:

• Provide targeted assistance to 501(c)3 organizations to help them keep their doors open during this crisis and offer paid leave to their employees.

College Students and Mental Health Help

The Associated Press has published an article under the headline, “As stigma ebbs, college students seek mental health help.”

Here’s an excerpt:

“More college students are turning to their schools for help with anxiety, depression and other mental health problems, and many must wait weeks for treatment or find help elsewhere as campus clinics struggle to meet demand, an Associated Press review of more than three dozen public universities found.

On some campuses, the number of students seeking treatment has nearly doubled over the last five years while overall enrollment has remained relatively flat. The increase has been tied to reduced stigma around mental health, along with rising rates of depression and other disorders. Universities have expanded their mental health clinics, but the growth is often slow, and demand keeps surging.

Long waits have provoked protests at schools from Maryland to California, in some cases following student suicides. Meanwhile, campus counseling centers grapple with low morale and high burnout as staff members face increasingly heavy workloads.”

Read the article: https://apnews.com/08e5c195bf04471e9c4a127abe831d91

How to Test Your Emotional Maturity

“Knowing how emotionally mature someone is can be the most important thing to know about them; but this knowledge may take (painful) years to acquire. This is why we’ve devised a very quick and very reliable test that can – in a few minutes – help us to ascertain our own and other people’s level of emotional maturity. It all has to do with how one responds to vulnerability.” – The School of Life in London

“One of the more puzzling aspects of the way we’re built is that our emotional development does not necessarily or automatically keep pace with our physical growth. We can be fifty-five on the outside and four and a half in terms of our impulses and habitual manner of communicating – just as we can be on the threshold of adulthood physically while an emotional sage within.

In order to assess our own and others’ emotional development, we can make use of a single deceptively simple question that quickly gets to the core of our underlying emotional ‘age’.”

Three cardinal virtues of emotional maturity: Communication, Trust, and Vulnerability.

Video: 6 minutes

Comedians Tackling Depression & Anxiety

“Laughing Matters is a 30-minute documentary that brings comedians together for an honest look and real conversations about comedy + mental health because when the cost of bringing others joy is your own joy…the cost is too high.”

This is a SoulPancake production in association with Funny Or Die and Alpen Pictures.

If you’re struggling, text HELLO to 741741 or call 1-800-273-8255.

Backline – Wellness Hub for Music Industry

Backline - Wellness Hub for Music Industry

Backline, a new mental health foundation and a collective effort of the music industry, has been formed to raise awareness and provide easy access to mental health resources for performers and professionals in the music industry.

The project will begin as a “referral-based system, where [mental health] professionals will assess visitors’ needs and lead them to appropriate resources. Backline’s goal is to provide a network of on-demand mental health services available at no (or low) cost for industry professionals, with a focus on addressing the unique challenges and stresses of our space.”

In addition to its online space, Backline will also provide a backstage resource for performers at events who may find themselves in distress.

For more information, see:  https://backline.care/

Project CommUNITY: Shining Light on Mental Health

At the beginning of this year (2019), officials in New Hampshire released a blueprint for how the state plans to address the mental health crisis for the next decade.

See coverage of the 10-year plan on WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire:

     https://www.wmur.com/article/new-hampshire-implements-10-year-mental-health-plan/29254050

     https://www.wmur.com/article/10-year-mental-health-plan-aims-to-improve-services-in-nh/29251763

View Part 3 of the WMUR Project CommUNITY special, “Shining Light on Mental Health” (12 minutes 37 seconds)

See the transcript for Part 3:

https://www.wmur.com/article/project-community-shining-light-on-mental-health-part-3/29255860

View Part 6 of the WMUR Project CommUNITY special, “Shining Light on Mental Health” (3 minutes 4 seconds)

See the transcript for Part 6:

https://www.wmur.com/article/project-community-shining-light-on-mental-health-part-6/29255920

View Part 1 (14 minutes 19 seconds):

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik3_1Fx1luM

     https://www.wmur.com/article/project-community-shining-light-on-mental-health-part-1/29255928

View Part 2 (7 minutes 46 seconds):

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aecxSzDH1IM

     https://www.wmur.com/article/project-community-shining-light-on-mental-health-part-2/29255834

View Part 4 (4 minutes 9 seconds):

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJQRBFzTDdE

     https://www.wmur.com/article/project-community-shining-light-on-mental-health-part-4/29255901

View Part 5 (3 minutes 221 seconds):

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf63vD6DmvM

     https://www.wmur.com/article/project-community-shining-light-on-mental-health-part-5/29255909

National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2019

Suicide is preventable.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the USA, with more than twice as many suicides as homicides.

Do you think there should be a three-digit telephone code for help with suicidal thoughts, just as there’s a three-digit number (911) in the USA for emergencies?

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a free service. In 2018, the hotline received 2.2 million calls. Its phone number is 1–800–273–8255. Would more calls be made and more lives saved if the phone number was easier to remember, such as 988?

The National Suicide Hotline Designation Act (H.R. 4194) of 2019 is a bipartisan bill in the US Congress that would make 988 the nationwide telephone number for suicidal counseling. The bill has thus far attracted 52 co-sponsors (29 Democrats and 23 Republicans) and now awaits a potential vote in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Read the text of the bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4194/text

September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is a nonpartisan organization and the largest grassroots mental health organization in the USA.

Although suicide prevention is important throughout the year, NAMI says, “Suicide Prevention Awareness Month provides a dedicated time to come together with collective passion and strength around a difficult topic” and that, “we can all benefit from honest conversations about mental health conditions and suicide.”

NAMI encourages you to contact members of Congress to voice your support, and ask for their support, for H.R. 4194, the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act.

If you are in crisis or are experiencing difficult or suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273 TALK (8255)

If you’re uncomfortable talking on the phone, you can send a text NAMI at 741-741 to be connected to a free, trained crisis counselor on the Crisis Text Line.

NAMI: https://nami.org

1 in 5 adults will experience mental illness this year.

Healthy Diet for Mental/Emotional Well-Being

Can what we eat help us to feel happy and protect us from depression? Is it any surprise to learn that research confirms that food affects our emotions and moods, including depression?

Kira M. Newman reports that new research is exploring the connection between the foods we eat and our feelings of depression, anxiety, and happiness.

See the article by Kira M. Newman at Greater Good Science, “What Is the Best Diet for Mental Health?”

Original: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_is_the_best_diet_for_mental_health

Also: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/best-diet-for-mental-health/

See a research report published by Psychosomatic Medicine, “The Effects of Dietary Improvement on Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.”

Food is medicine! Eat for well-being!

Oregon Students Take Mental Health Days

Four teenagers in Oregon led a successful, first of its kind, effort in the USA to treat physical and mental health equally by lobbying for a mental health bill that was signed by Oregon’s governor in July. As a result, Oregon schools now allow students to miss classes for mental or behavioral health reasons without penalty.

Read the report by National Public Radio, “Feeling Blue? Oregon Students Allowed To Take ‘Mental Health Days’”

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among Oregon residents aged 15 to 34, and the eighth-leading cause among all ages in the state, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

The national suicide rate increased 33 percent from 1999 to 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.