May is Mental Health Month (2023)
Jose Ureta
Principal People Operations Partner | D&I Advocate | Mentor | Allyship Practitioner | Mental Health Advocate | Change Maker
May is #MentalHealth month and because this particular year the topic is hitting very close to home for me, I want to take this opportunity to share a few thoughts that came up when I watched an interview with the parents of a gunman who killed 5 people in Louisville recently.
The interview is so layered and touches on so many topics, that I have to admit when the video began, I was focused on the framing of the family and how they were being presented. Initially, I rolled my eyes and thought: “Here we go again! They’re going to do all the work to humanize the shooter. Again.” The “they” in this case being the media, knowing from experience that when crimes are perpetrated by a certain type of individual, they get portrayed as an individual with all the nuances that come with being a flawed and ever changing human being. However, by the time the video ended, I was in tears and had a deep admiration for those parents sharing their story.
The interview touches on mental health and gun rights. The only comment I make related to the gun issue here is that "mental health issues" is being used to paint too broad a stroke in an effort to disperse blame and shift focus away from guns, in favor of further stigmatizing the already vulnerable community of people who live with a wide range and spectrum of mental health related conditions.
My main focus is the conversation about mental health. #RepresentationMatters , and I worry about how #MentalHealthIssue is used as a blanket term to talk about an incredibly wide variety of situations, which on their own are also nuanced and challenging in different ways. When we broadly lump situations together like that, we lose the ability to properly address root causes. More importantly, we lose sight of the humanity in those situations. Sometimes it feels like all those situations get lumped under the umbrella term in a haphazard effort to make all the discomfort associated with mental health quickly go away. The interview with the parents is only 13 minutes long, but Friday night it took me over 90 minutes to finish it because I shared it with some friends as I was watching, and started texting about related topics. I could not believe how much of what the parents were sharing was relatable to experiences that have challenged me to my core in recent months. They seemed to be doing all the right things in supporting a loved one through “mental health issues” and still lost. They were vigilant, supportive, open with communication, resourceful and tenacious. Even so, they still felt blindsided by the events. Their tenacity in fighting to get their son the help he needed - driven by a fear of losing him during a mental health crisis - ended with him taking the lives of others. That is heartbreaking and unnervingly scary. This is a family that hears about their son’s mental crisis on a Tuesday, has a family session with him and his psychiatrist two days later on Thursday, and is robust enough to have an easter egg hunt attended by close to 60 family members. If it can happen to them with all that, what of us with much less access to healthcare and fewer or scrawnier social connections?
Because of how #privilege works, prior to March, I was blissfully unaware of the true medical meaning of terms like #BipolarDisorder , #PsychoticFeatures , or #Mania . Instead, those terms were, in my mind, automatically and insidiously associated with more widely accepted, and grossly oversimplified social understanding of the conditions that the medical terms describe. I was also shielded from knowing how frustrating, and taxing it can be calling around to keep tabs on a loved one that has been placed on a 5150 or 5250 psychiatric hold. Today, those terms hold a very different meaning for me. I can easily see how damaging my former understanding and even use of the terms as adjectives meant to bring emphasis or hyperbole for comedic effect can be.
Because of my understanding of how #allyship works, I have known for some time that whenever I am in a position to help somebody out, I do it. Were it not for a slightly different set of circumstances, a little less access to a certain resource through no fault of my own, the person needing my help could have been me. So, even if it takes a little more effort on my part. Even if I’m tired. Even if they are the 57th person to ask me the same thing that I tried to pre-emptively convey in a communication. Even if my group is woefully understaffed. I help when I can.
Recently, I have come across many people in the #healthcare industry. They are busy people who seem governed by a working set of rules and guidelines that I’m not familiar with. People who seem to be working through long hours, short breaks, and insufficient help. Some of these people gave me the impression that they were just checking boxes and processing people as if in an assembly line. Others were genuinely kind, and present. If that’s you, and you are still the type to try to connect to the person at the other end of the line, if you calmly and warmly answer questions. If you are the type to try to explain how to navigate what you know can be a bewildering process to a confused but concerned caretaker. If you understand that when a person receives life changing news about their loved one they might want to have multiple conversations to go over the same information because their reality just shifted in a major way. If you are kind, patient, open, welcoming and reassuring #ThankYou , your personal touch, and ability to meet people where they are make an important impact that, I know from personal experience, is carried forward.
Lastly, I have been reaching out to friends and family a lot more in recent weeks as a coping mechanism. In one episode of the Podcast: How to Build a Happy Life they talked about a study that showed that problems and life challenges seemed easier to participants of the study when they were in the company of someone they thought cared about them. I tested it out, and yes it absolutely made a difference to feel seen and heard. Even if nothing material really changed about the situation, making time and having time to share thoughts and feelings associated with the challenges, made the burden lighter somehow. Doing this also had the added benefit of strengthening bonds, which is always a great outcome. I feel fortunate to have come across so many people that I can share the highs AND the lows of this life.
If you are experiencing challenges related to mental health here is a list of things to read, watch, or learn about that have helped me recently:
Podcasts
领英推荐
Books
Organizations
Practices
#Therapy ! Lot of companies out there are offering access to therapy through Employee Assistance Programs, and by one measure these programs have a use rate of under 15%. That is quite low usage. Some reasons for this low use could be associated with how accessible these services are, but I suspect that a significant portion has to do with how cultural norms present obstacles to even consider using these services across various intersections of identity and group membership. #EndTheStigma
The RULER method (Regarding emotions: Recognize, Understand, Label, Express, Regulate) has been very helpful as framework to process emotions, and a reminder to actually experience them instead of ignoring or burying them.
Managing uncertainty by slowing down and focusing on what is in my immediate control and prioritizing my time and energy expenditure accordingly.