Category: Mental Health

  • By Katie Todd, RNZ News reporter

    An Australian criminologist who deemed the New Zealand shopping mall attacker “low risk” in 2018 believes there were missed opportunities to steer him away from violent extremism.

    Ahamed Samsudeen was described as a high risk to the community when he was sentenced in July for possessing Islamic State propaganda — with the means and motivation to commit violent acts.

    However, three years earlier, Australian National University criminologist Dr Clarke Jones told the High Court Ahamed did not appear to be violent and did not fit the profile of a young Muslim person who had been radicalised.

    At the time Dr Jones suggested “a carefully designed, culturally sensitive and closely supervised intervention programme in the Auckland Muslim community”.

    Now, he said, it was unclear how much rehabilitation actually took place.

    “People can change, sometimes quickly, sometimes over a longer period of time. But back in 2018, we didn’t think that he was violent,” he explained.

    At the time Samsudeen appeared to feel marginalised and disconnected, Dr Clarke said, like he couldn’t “get his foot up” in society.

    ‘Rigid life views’
    “Some of the material he was reading was of concern and he had fairly rigid views around religion and around life in general. But he’d also had some experience in difficult times and was, I would argue, deeply depressed.”

    On Friday, Samsudeen walked into a Countdown supermarket in LynnMall, picked up a knife and stabbed at least shoppers, leaving some of them critically injured, before he was shot dead by tactical force police tailing him.

    Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen
    Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen as identified in New Zealand news media. Image: TVNZ screenshot APR

    In the High Court in July, Samsudeen had admitted two charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage, two charges of knowingly distributing restricted material and one charge of failing to assist the police in their exercise of a search power.

    Another expert was consulted — forensic psychiatrist Dr Jeremy Skipworth — who echoed Dr Clarke’ concerns.

    “Dr Skipworth said that any form of home detention would tend to further exacerbate your mental health concerns, and that your successful community reintegration is likely to be assisted by cornerstones, such as stable housing, personal support, appropriate employment and medical care,” reads Justice Wylie’s sentencing notes.

    Justice Wylie imposed a sentence of supervision, with special conditions, including a psychological assessment and a rehabilitation programme with a service called Just Community.

    Dr Jones said he really would like to know more about what support Samsudeen was actually given in Corrections.

    ‘Was he responsive?’
    “Was he responsive to that treatment, if he was receiving any treatment at all, or was the focus more on on the security side and the monitoring and the surveillance?”

    Asked if the terrorist had enough support to “get better”, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said there had been attempts to change the man’s mind — and none of them were successful.

    But in a family statement released after the attack, Samsudeen’s brother said he sometimes listened.

    “He would hang up the phone on us when we told him to forget about all of the issues he was obsessed with. Then he would call us back again himself when he realised he was wrong.

    “Aathil was wrong again [on Friday]. Of course we feel very sad that he could not be saved. The prisons and the situation was hard on him and he did not have any support. He told us he was assaulted there.”

    Dr Clarke said, “I would say that we haven’t got the balance right. In this case there was too much focus on the counter-terrorism or counter violent extremism narrative, rather than actually getting to the core of what was wrong with Mr Samsudeen.”

    “We can always improve the way we do things to have have greater preventative sort of mechanisms within government, police and communities.”

    Dr Clarke said what happened in LynnMall was a tragedy and a terrible situation.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • New adviser on resettling Afghan nationals says immediate focus will be on mental health services for evacuees airlifted out of Kabul

    The Australian government’s newly appointed adviser on resettling Afghan nationals has predicted the “residual trauma” among those fleeing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will be “amongst the highest levels of any groups we’ve ever resettled”.

    Paris Aristotle, the co-chair of an advisory panel announced on Monday, also said he welcomed signals from the government that it was open to taking more than the 3,000 Afghan nationals it initially pledged to accommodate by June next year.

    Related: Afghan allies feel ‘abandoned’ by Australia and New Zealand, as Kabul evacuation flights end

    Related: Family of Australian man beaten by Taliban plead for government to help evacuate him

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • New adviser on resettling Afghan nationals says immediate focus will be on mental health services for evacuees airlifted out of Kabul

    The Australian government’s newly appointed adviser on resettling Afghan nationals has predicted the “residual trauma” among those fleeing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will be “amongst the highest levels of any groups we’ve ever resettled”.

    Paris Aristotle, the co-chair of an advisory panel announced on Monday, also said he welcomed signals from the government that it was open to taking more than the 3,000 Afghan nationals it initially pledged to accommodate by June next year.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • RNZ News

    Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke at today’s 1pm press conference about the importance of mental health and support services in the community during New Zealand’s delta covid-19 outbreak.

    “Having positive cases in our communities, along with the impact of lockdowns I know can be hugely unsettling, and that uncertainty can impact on everyone’s mental health,” she said.

    “It’s OK to feel overwhelmed, to feel upset or even to feel frustrated, because this situation is often all of those things. But there are places you can go for support and help, even while you’re living with restrictions.”

    The Ministry of Health and Unite Against Covid websites have a list of resources, Ardern said.

    “These include tools targeted at young people, who may be finding this time challenging, in particular those isolating in hostels or halls of residence.”

    Calls to health services and use of online services have risen during lockdown.

    “We know for instance that early on in the lockdown there was a spike in calls to Youthline,” Ardern said, and the government has since boosted their funding by $275,000.

    Extra $1m for community health projects
    An additional $1 million in funding was announced today by Health Minister Andrew Little for community projects to support youth mental health in Auckland and Northland.

    Ardern listed several different helplines available (see full RNZ list).

    “There is also targeted mental health support available to Pacific Communities via a dedicated 0800 number: 0800 OLA LELEI 0800-652-535,” Ardern said.

    Episodes of family violence have been reported during lockdown around the country.

    “Family violence and sexual violence services are considered essential services and are continuing to operate at level 4,” Ardern said.

    “If you feel you’re in an unsafe environment, you do not need to stay in your home or in your bubble. If you’re not safe at home you can leave your bubble. If you feel in danger, call 111.

    “If you or someone you know is in danger and it is not safe to talk, police have the silent solution, phone 111 and if you do not speak you’ll get the option of pressing 55, you can then listen carefully to the call-taker’s questions and instructions so they can arrange assistance for you.”

    Central Auckland on Wednesday 25 August 2021 on the eighth today of a Covid-19 lockdown.
    Central Auckland on Day 8 of the lockdown. Image: John Edens/RNZ

    There is also support for those struggling to access food.

    “Yesterday we announced an additional $7 million for food security networks operating at alert level 4. The additional funding will help with the distribution of an additional 60,000 food parcels, and 10,000 wellbeing packs,” Ardern said.

    83 community cases
    There have been 83 new community cases of covid-19 reported in New Zealand today.

    Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said 82 of the new cases are in Auckland, with one new case in Wellington. The Wellington case was a close contact of an existing case, and was in isolation with no exposure in the community while infectious.

    Dr Bloomfield said 34 people are now in New Zealand hospitals with the coronavirus, including two people in ICU. All are in a stable condition.

    Three of those cases are in North Shore Hospital, 18 in Middlemore Hospital, 13 in Auckland City Hospital, while one is in Wellington Regional Hospital. Dr Bloomfield said the hospitalisation rate in this outbreak is 6-7 percent which is higher than previous outbreaks.

    The total number of confirmed cases associated with the Auckland outbreak is now 511 – 496 in Auckland and 15 in Wellington.

    Dr Bloomfield said more than 60 percent of cases are under 30.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A generation of children could be “failed” because of a lack of adequate mental health support, experts have said.

    The Mental Health Network warned that many children could be left without vital support due to shortages which could allow their problems to worsen over time.

    Its latest report states that the mental health system for children and young people is reaching a “tipping point” as it faces significant demand.

    The pandemic has led to extra pressures which could lead to mental health problems for youngsters including uncertainty and anxiety caused by the lockdowns, school closures, isolation from friends and peers, bereavement and loss, and extra stresses and pressures on families, it said.

    The coronavirus crisis has also worsened existing problems of mental health inequalities.

    As many as 1.5 million children and young people may need new or additional mental health support as a result of the pandemic, previous analysis suggests.

    The authors raised particular concern for those in need of eating disorder services after a huge spike in demand.

    In March 2020, there were 237,088 children and young people in contact with mental health services in England, compared to 305,802 in February 2021, the Mental Health Network said.

    The network, which is part of the NHS Confederation, called on the government to fully invest in services ahead of the autumn spending review.

    It said that while there is pressure on hospital beds in the short term, ministers must consider the longer term and plough funds into early intervention and preventative measures to help children.

    And more must done to help plug staffing gaps, it added.

    Sean Duggan, chief executive of the Mental Health Network, said: “A generation of children and young people requiring support for their mental health risk being failed because the NHS is not being adequately resourced to support them.

    “While health leaders are grateful that investment from the Government has begun, as well as for the prioritisation children and young people’s mental health has been given, the continued toll of the pandemic has shown that it may not be enough to respond to the rising demand for their services. Funding must be both long-term and sustainable.

    “We have seen outstanding examples from our members working together to support the mental wellbeing of their younger patients, through both preventative services and inpatient care, but nationally, it is clear we are now at a tipping point.

    “Many young people are developing mental health problems as a direct result of the pandemic and with Covid-19 cases expected to rise in the autumn, this is a worrying position to be in.

    “Additional and targeted investment is essential, as is a real commitment from the Government to continue expanding and improving services so that we can avoid failing children and young people when they may need help the most.”

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Reason can wrestle and overthrow terror.

    — Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

    Medical ethics in the West has long been predicated on informed consent, the oath to do no harm, the notion that good health care is a human right, and the search for scientific truth free from skullduggery and censorship. These tenets are not only integral to a sound health care system but are foundational to a civilized society. Lamentably, each of these sacrosanct principles is anathema to the medical industrial complex. For we have entered the Age of Faucism.

    In “Why do patients hate going to the doctor?” by Maheswari Raja, MD, the author reiterates the establishment medical narrative, that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our health care system, and that the problem is the American patient:

    And the truth is that the doctor’s office is an uncomfortable place. It is where one answers the most intimate questions and speaks their most intimate fears — where they have to face the reality of the consequences of their behaviors and misjudgments.

    Will physicians devoid of a moral compass, the private health insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry ever face the consequences of their “behaviors and misjudgments?” No less delusional and absurd, Dana Hassneiah, MD, writes in KevinMD:

    Most people in other jobs would probably not care to help a person who is indifferent and doesn’t want to help himself. But in medicine, your knowledge and morals make you the desperate person in the encounter.

    These superior morals were on display in the Covid vaccine propaganda video where doctors tell patients to “Just grow the f**k up and get the vaccine,” an obscenity emblematic of the growing push towards severing ties with the Hippocratic Oath.

    Embedded in Faucism are three cults: the Cult of Psychiatry, the Church of Vaccinology, and the Branch Covidians. These branches of American pseudo-medicine inhabit a world of authoritarianism, zealotry, and unreason, and are anchored in a deep-seated contempt for informed consent and the oath to do no harm. Just as Europeans who were suspected of deviating from a once supremely powerful church were labeled heretics, necromancers, and accused of witchcraft and sorcery, those that have the temerity to question the pharmaceutical priesthood are denounced as “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vax,” and “anti-science.” Whether it be Wahhabism, the Cultural Revolution in China, the Nazis, or the Christian fundamentalists of 16th and 17th century Europe, tyranny needs a dogma, and the rapacious corporatization of medicine coupled with the neoliberal belief in the infallibility of the liberal media have spawned Faucism.

    The Cult of Psychiatry is grounded in despotism and dogmatism, as virtually all of the diseases in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can neither be scientifically tested nor proven. (Consider how depraved a physician would have to be to genuinely believe that “oppositional defiant disorder” is a real medical diagnosis). The more mental illnesses are invented, the more psychiatrists are able to create drug addicts for the pharmaceutical industry. Undoubtedly, there are sinister elements within the intelligence services that are delighted with this Huxleyan state of affairs. While there will always be some good people in psychiatry such as Peter Breggin, MD, the field is infested with sociopaths that regard every human emotion as a disease. Indeed, the Britney Spears tragedy offers a harrowing example of psychiatric sadism and cruelty.

    When a new vaccine is in production, one should always ask three questions: Is the vaccine necessary? Is it safe? And is it efficacious? The Church of Vaccinology is founded on the notion that every vaccine is necessary, safe, and effective, and history has repeatedly shown this to be a myth going back to the Cutter Incident. Since vaccination constitutes a significant medical intervention which poses an element of risk, why should a vaccine be produced for an illness which is treatable? And if vaccines are unfailingly innocuous, why is there a need for coercion? Alas, wherever there are insatiable pharmaceutical cabals one is sure to find marketing masquerading as science.

    The Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) granted for the mRNA vaccines is contingent on there being no treatments for Covid. Yet this claim is fallacious, as Ivermectin (see herehere, here and here) and Hydroxychloroquine (see hereherehere, here and here) have indeed shown efficacy in the treatment of COVID-19, particularly if these regimens are deployed early in the disease process. Moreover, unlike with the mRNA vaccines, Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin have a strong safety profile, the former being approved by the FDA in 1955, and the latter being on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines. (The CDC’s website states that “Hydroxychloroquine can be prescribed to adults and children of all ages. It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers”). Those who spurn the studies which demonstrate that Covid is treatable because this would contradict the pharmaceutical priesthood are no less indoctrinated than those who once insisted that the Earth couldn’t possibly go around the Sun because this contradicted the teachings of the church. Terrified of excommunication, the proselytized refuse to look through the telescope. They refuse to see.

    Unlike the mRNA hucksters, the physicians of the FLCCC Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) have treated thousands of Covid patients and have real-world experience in successfully treating COVID-19. Does this mean that they will be able to save every life? No, it does not. There are Americans that die every year from influenza and pneumonia. Has that led to calls to turn the country into an enormous prison?

    The “vaccines” have not been proven to prevent transmission and there have been thousands of so-called “breakthrough cases.” In “Are vaccines driving the surge in new Covid infections?” Marco Cáceres points out that “In the UK, Israel, Chile and other countries with high vaccination rates, Covid infections among the fully vaccinated are outpacing those in the unvaccinated….” Israel’s Channel 13 has reported that in the Herzog Medical Center in Jerusalem the overwhelming majority of hospitalized Covid patients are fully vaccinated. Perhaps we can take delight in knowing what the vaccines have been proven to do: inflict staggering amounts of pain and suffering.

    It is likely that FDA, CDC, and NIH have known for quite some time about the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine, as an article about SARS-CoV-1 appeared in Virology Journal titled “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread,” and was published in 2005. Of course, when science gets in the way of profit-making, one can always publish fraudulent papers which later have to be retracted. As Dr. Peter McCullough has repeatedly emphasized, the public health agencies instructed doctors to send patients home without treatment when they were sick with Covid, as opposed to establishing protocols for how to treat patients early and aggressively with drugs that were already FDA approved. How many thousands died as a result of this malfeasance?

    The 1976 swine flu vaccine program was terminated after it caused the death of dozens of Americans and gave hundreds of Americans Guillain-Barré syndrome. Data on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicate that there have been thousands of Covid vaccine deaths in the US, and yet the authorities continue with this unprecedented push to get the entire planet vaccinated. It is important to note that VAERS is notoriously dysfunctional and captures only 1% to 10% of the actual data. Interestingly, the CDC recently decided to slash the VAERS death toll for Covid vaccines from 13,068 to 6,018 citing “foreign reports.”

    Distinguished scientists and physicians such as Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, Dr. Ryan Cole, Dr. Sucharit BhakdiDr. Harvey RischDr. Mike YeadonDr. Roger HodkinsonDr. Tess Lawrie, and doctors Stephanie Seneff and Greg Nigh have expressed concern over the growing number of mRNA vaccine adverse events and the lack of long-term safety data. The cultlike notion that one must submit to the collective through masking and vaccination is antithetical to the principle of bodily autonomy and mirrors the sophistry used to defend female genital mutilation. It is also scientific hogwash, for if the vaccine confers immunity what difference does it make if one’s friends, colleagues, and neighbors are vaccinated or unvaccinated?

    Branch Covidian dogma mirrors the Nazi medical ethos, which maintained that any medical atrocity can be justified if done for the “greater good.” For instance, if an SS doctor were to place a Russian prisoner of war in a tub of ice water, monitor his vital signs and note how long it took for him to die, and then autopsy the body, all in an attempt to glean information that could ostensibly be used to aid German pilots and sailors, this would be justified by the medical community of the Third Reich as acceptable and executed within their medical guidelines. In this same vein, Branch Covidians would argue that the catastrophic impact of the lockdowns, the growing numbers of Covid vaccine deaths and injuries, and the deleterious consequences of the mask mandates are justified, as these measures represent inevitable collateral damage integral to “flattening the curve” and “preventing emergency rooms from being overwhelmed.” (A remarkable case of sophistry, particularly when one considers the fact that Ivermectin can be used prophylactically). According to Children’s Health Defense, “Nearly 67 million [Americans] lost work between Mar. 21 and Oct. 7, 2020.” And this, for a virus which is treatable and has a 99.7% survival rate! As the public health agencies of FDA, CDC, NIH, and NIAID (which should really be called corporate health agencies) have long fallen victim to regulatory capture, they have no incentive to impose stringent safety guidelines.

    In England, more minors have been lost to suicide than to “the coronavirus,” while thousands of American children have suffered serious adverse events from the experimental inoculations (see herehere, here, here and here), even as their risk of dying from Covid is almost statistically zero. Clearly, the Nuremberg Code is being egregiously violated, as EUA biologicals are by definition experimental. Bemoaning this deterioration of bioethical norms, one of the inventors of mRNA technology, Robert Malone, MD, writes in TrialSite News that “The Geneva Convention, the Helsinki declaration, and the entire structure which supports ethical human subjects research requires that research subjects be fully informed of risks and must consent to participation without coercion.”

    When a powerful pharmaceutical company is impatient to unleash a blockbuster drug they are invariably indifferent to safety, necessity, and efficacy. This apathetic attitude towards basic principles of medical ethics has been glaringly on display with regard to the overprescribing of benzodiazepines, the Vioxx disaster, the opioid epidemic, the psychotropic drug epidemic, anthrax vaccine (also an EUA), Gardasil vaccine, the 2009 Pandemrix vaccine for H1N1, and fen-phen, drugs and vaccines which have destroyed countless lives and some of which are still on the market. Bear in mind that the medical institutions that are responsible for these drug regulatory catastrophes – some of the worst in human history – are “the experts.”

    College students are generally kept in the dark about the many illegal wars of aggression, both covert and overt, that have been perpetrated by the CIA and the Pentagon. This is even more common with the indoctrination of military academy cadets and political science majors. Likewise, most medical graduates know nothing about the history of the pharmaceutical industry, rendering them incapable of placing contemporary events in their appropriate historical context. This intellectual amnesia explains how we ended up with an army of doctors that will happily hand out opioids, psychotropic drugs, benzodiazepines, and Covid vaccines as if they were gummy bears. Those among us that can no longer distinguish between real medical care, rooted in informed consent, the oath to do no harm, and medical scientific integrity, and Nazi medical care, where the powers of modern medicine are weaponized and used to enslave, debase, and violate have lost their humanity.

    Parents are consistently told by pediatricians that every vaccine is “safe and effective” and that no risk-benefit analysis is needed. As the ghosts of history emerge from the shadows, these claims ring hollow. Granted, this may be true with regard to certain immunizations, but the dramatic surge in the number of mandatory vaccines on the CDC schedule, combined with the treasonous behavior of the public health agencies, and the broad immunity granted for the vaccine manufacturers, has brought us to a precipice from which we are staring at an abyss of tyranny. Indeed, the Church of Vaccinology isn’t interested in public health. They are interested in money and power.

    The notion of vaccine inviolability is laid to rest in Dr. Richard Moskowitz’s masterpiece Vaccines: A Reappraisal. Concluding chapter 9, he writes:

    Population-based surveys have shown a linear, directly proportional relationship between the number of vaccinations administered in the first year of life and the infant mortality rate, as well as the rate of hospitalizations and emergency room visits during the same period. Other surveys have shown that children vaccinated according to the CDC schedule exhibit higher rates of asthma and other childhood diseases and generally have poorer health than those who were ‘undervaccinated,’ while those children who were never vaccinated at all seemed by far the healthiest in a number of typical parameters.

    As discussed in The Virus and the Vaccine, by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher, millions of Americans were given polio vaccines tainted with the monkey virus SV40, a contaminant initially dismissed as incidental by our public health agencies, but which was later shown to be oncogenic. There is also the unresolved yet compelling hypothesis of Edward Hooper, laid out in his tome The River, where he argues that the HIV pandemic began when the CHAT oral polio vaccine was deployed in the Belgian Congo, an apartheid state, and that chimpanzee kidneys contaminated with SIV, the cousin to HIV, were used in this process, meaning that the origins of HIV would be iatrogenic. Nevertheless, we mustn’t listen to heathens like Hooper who “spread misinformation,” are likely working for the Russians, and are possibly even terrorists.

    The totalitarian mentality of the medical establishment is evidenced not only by their lack of humanism and compassion, but by their disdain for checks and balances. Consider the bizarre language on the CDC’s website, where they repeatedly speak of “orders” that they allegedly have the authority to hand down. And who, pray tell, do they take “orders” from? As Senator Ronald Johnson pointed out in his discussion with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in affiliation with Children’s Health Defense, the government’s response to SARS-CoV-2 has been marked by a dangerous censorship and a growing antipathy towards openness and debate.

    The term “anti-vaxxer” is designed to disparage and denigrate those who reject biofascism. In actuality, these people are “pro-informed-consenters.” (Were those who expressed outrage over thalidomide-induced teratogenesis “anti-drug?”) They also resent the fact that the drug companies cannot be sued should their vaccines inflict long-lasting harm, which has been the case in the US since the passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a dastardly piece of legislation which gave the drug companies permission to use children as laboratory ferrets. Furthermore, the drug companies have liability protection for any adverse event caused by a Covid vaccine under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP), providing the pharmaceutical industry with multiple layers of immunity. The drug companies were afforded no liability protection for opioids and Vioxx, yet when it comes to vaccines where they are indemnified “they suddenly find Jesus,” as Robert Kennedy Jr. is fond of saying.

    For decades, informed consent has been under a sustained and ruthless assault. From threatening to call Child Protective Services should parents not want their children on psychotropic drugs, to failing to communicate the dangers of opioids and benzodiazepines, to practice pelvic exams performed on anesthetized patients by trainees, to the imposition of unwanted observers during physician office visits, to the violation of do-not-resuscitate orders, to the nondisclosure of long-term chemotherapy side effects, to the growing list of mandatory vaccines of dubious safety and efficacy, informed consent is being systematically and methodically dismantled. The mask mandates, lockdowns, and the relentless pressure to participate in a dangerous medical experiment are merely a perpetuation of this barbarism. Moreover, masks and vaccines are inextricably linked, for if a restaurant, bar, library, museum, school, or workplace has the power to deny you entry due to being unmasked then they will have the power to deny you entry should you be unvaccinated (an unfolding reality in New York City), as a critical precedent for medical martial law has been established.

    As pediatrician and pulmonologist Sterling Simpson, MD, pointed out in his interview with The Last American Vagabond, the majority of masks people are using are not FDA approved, which underscores the fact that they do not constitute a real medical device. In other words, the risks, such as extreme isolation, sensory deprivation, mass hysteria, traumatized children (some of whom are showing signs of cognitive impairment), and people becoming acidotic, can easily outweigh the benefits. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test is likewise not FDA approved. McBride and Locricchio write for The Defender:

    All COVID vaccines, COVID PCR and antigen tests, and masks are merely EUA-authorized, not approved or licensed, by the federal government. Long-term safety and efficacy have not been proven.

    EUA products are by definition experimental, which requires people be given the right to refuse them. Under the Nuremberg Code, the foundation of ethical medicine, no one may be coerced to participate in a medical experiment. Consent of the individual is ‘absolutely essential.’

    To underscore the dangers of rushing a vaccine to market in under a year, it took Sanofi Pasteur twenty years to create the dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia, which ultimately led to antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), a phenomenon whereby vaccination inadvertently facilitates viral replication. The formalin-inactivated (FI) Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine used in the 1960s is another example of ADE. Dr. Malone and Doctors for COVID Ethics have warned that this very scenario could unfold with the mRNA vaccines. (A new vaccine for RSV is expected to be extremely profitable and pharmaceutical companies are presently jockeying for position). Perhaps it is those who are responsible for pushing inadequately tested vaccines that are responsible for “spreading misinformation” and “stoking vaccine hesitancy.”

    If a government can force you to take an experimental drug, what will prevent them from forcing you to have exploratory brain surgery, a tracheotomy, or gender reassignment surgery? The Nazification of American medicine is magnified tenfold in the public schools, where sorcery has usurped science and the three death cults are bludgeoning minds, bodies, and spirits, and doing so in an environment of brutality and unmitigated lawlessness.

    The interminable fearmongering about all the different variants is simply a more rabid and maniacal version of what precipitated the 1976 swine flu, 2003 smallpox, and 2009 H1N1 vaccination programs. Keep that in mind the next time you’re told to “follow the science.” Another preposterous canard being parroted by the media is that naturally acquired immunity is somehow inadequate and pales in comparison with vaccine-induced immunity. As Dr. Charles Hoffe has pointed out, patients that have immunity for SARS-CoV-1 have immunity for SARS-CoV-2, despite the fact that there is a 20% difference between these two viruses, while the different Covid variants have less than a 1% difference between them.

    Can any amount of money restore fulfillment and tranquility to a perfidious soul? Let us reflect on the words of Imogen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline:

    Thus may poor fools
    Believe false teachers: though those that are betray’d
    Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor
    Stands in worse case of woe. (III.iv.)

    A collection of clowns, witch hunters, Eichmanns, and snickering snake oil salesmen, the Branch Covidians, together with the Church of Vaccinology and the Cult of Psychiatry, are hammering away at two of the most vital, indispensable, and irreplaceable pillars of democracy: informed consent and the First Amendment.

    As relationships crumble and the pressure to succumb to the primordial darkness grows, the chasm inexorably widens between the moral and the amoral, the sentient and the nonsentient, the wise and the wicked. Should the citadel of liberty fall to the hordes of Faucism, we will descend into a long and terrible night before our descendants reclaim its resurrection.

    The post America in an Age of Faucism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Young people aged 14 to 24 may be the most vulnerable of all young people since WWII.

    Their mental health has been affected by: 

    ·        A Global Financial Crisis

    ·        A decade of austerity

    ·        The COVID-19 Pandemic

    Now a research team, led by Lancaster University working with Newcastle University and the University of York, and funded by health research charity the Wellcome Trust, will model the impact of Universal Basic Income (UBI) schemes on health. 

    UBI is a system of regular, secure, unconditional cash transfers to all citizens. The team’s model of impact suggests that UBI can promote health by reducing poverty, mitigating stress associated with inequality and changing behaviour to promote longer-term interests. 

    For the first time, the project, which starts this month, will model the impact of UBI to predict its impact on anxiety and depression among 14 to 24-year olds. 

    Leading the research team Professor Matthew Johnson, a senior lecturer in politics at Lancaster University, said: “While UBI has been promoted for various reasons across the political spectrum, debate on the topic has reached a relative impasse in the absence of representative, accurately measured trials in industrialised countries. 

    “However, evidence that UBI has the potential to promote the health of large parts of society can shift debate, particularly at a time of pandemic. 

    “Given that the UK Government is committed to a prevention agenda, this project provides valuable evidence on the public health impact by which to make the case for pilot schemes.” 

    The multidisciplinary team, which includes leading epidemiologist Professor Kate E. Pickett from the University of York, and leading behavioural scientist Professor Daniel Nettle, from Newcastle University, will be working with the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and campaigning organisation Compass to engage with young people from Bradford via the ActEarly project and a range of disability rights bodies to design UBI schemes. 

    These schemes will then be used to predict impact on anxiety and depression by HealthLumen, who specialise in simulating the health and economic impact of proposed interventions before real-world implementation. 

    The findings will be communicated to key policy makers through an end of project report, which will be published by the RSA, who have a track record of driving forward debate on UBI. 

    “While UBI has been promoted for various reasons across the political spectrum, debate on the topic has reached a relative impasse in the absence of representative, accurately measured trials in industrialised countries,” Professor Matthew Johnson

    Vitally, the project will also, for the first time, establish universal research protocols for accurate measurement of health impact during trails of UBI.

    The post New research in UK will assess impact of UBI on mental health of youth age 18 to 24 appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • UN human rights committee says Kaveh, who lies emaciated in a Melbourne hospital, should be moved to community detention

    A dangerously ill refugee held within Australia’s immigration detention regime for eight years has secured an interim order from the United Nations human rights committee urging the Australian government to release him into the community.

    Kaveh, a refugee from a Middle Eastern country, is currently in a Melbourne hospital, emaciated and suffering a range of complex physical and mental health issues. Standing at 176cm tall, he weighs just 47kg.

    Related: Afghan refugee may lose permanent residency in Australia – for supplying identity document

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ANALYSIS: By Rhonda Garad, Monash University; Joanne Enticott, Monash University, and Rebecca Patrick, Deakin University

    As we write this article, the delta strain of covid-19 is reminding the world the pandemic is far from over, with millions of Australians in lockdown and infection rates outpacing a global vaccination effort.

    In the northern hemisphere, record breaking temperatures in the form of heat domes recently caused uncontrollable “firebombs”, while unprecedented floods disrupted millions of people.

    Hundreds of lives have been lost due to heat stress, drownings and fire.

    The twin catastrophic threats of climate change and a pandemic have created an “epoch of incredulity”. It’s not surprising many Australians are struggling to cope.

    During the pandemic’s first wave in 2020, we collected nationwide data from 5483 adults across Australia on how climate change affects their mental health. In our new paper, we found that while Australians are concerned about covid-19, they were almost three times more concerned about climate change.

    That Australians are very worried about climate change is not a new finding. But our study goes further, warning of an impending epidemic of mental health related disorders such as eco-anxiety, climate disaster-related post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and future-orientated despair.

    Which Australians are most worried?
    We asked Australians to compare their concerns about climate change, covid, retirement, health, ageing and employment, using a four-point scale (responses ranging from “not a problem” to “very much a problem”).

    A high level of concern about climate change was reported across the whole population regardless of gender, age, or residential location (city or rural, disadvantaged or affluent areas). Women, young adults, the well-off, and those in their middle years (aged 35 to 54) showed the highest levels of concern about climate change.

    The latter group (aged 35 to 54) may be particularly worried because they are, or plan to become, parents and may be concerned about the future for their children.

    The high level of concern among young Australians (aged 18 to 34) is not surprising, as they’re inheriting the greatest existential crisis faced by any generation. This age group have shown their concern through numerous campaigns such as the School Strike 4 Climate, and several successful litigations.

    Of the people we surveyed in more affluent groups, 78 percent reported a high level of worry. But climate change was still very much a problem for those outside this group (42 percent) when compared to covid-related worry (27 percent).

    We also found many of those who directly experienced a climate-related disaster — bushfires, floods, extreme heat waves — reported symptoms consistent with PTSD. This includes recurrent memories of the trauma event, feeling on guard, easily startled and nightmares.

    Others reported significant pre-trauma and eco-anxiety symptoms. These include recurrent nightmares about future trauma, poor concentration, insomnia, tearfulness, despair and relationship and work difficulties.

    Overall, we found the inevitability of climate threats limit Australians’ ability to feel optimistic about their future, more so than their anxieties about COVID.

    How are people managing their climate worry?
    Our research also provides insights into what people are doing to manage their mental health in the face of the impending threat of climate change.

    Rather than seeking professional mental health support such as counsellors or psychologists, many Australians said they were self-prescribing their own remedies, such as being in natural environments (67 percent) and taking positive climate action (83 percent), where possible.

    Many said they strengthen their resilience through individual action (such as limiting their plastic use), joining community action (such as volunteering), or joining advocacy efforts to influence policy and raise awareness.

    Indeed, our research from earlier this year showed environmental volunteering has mental health benefits, such as improving connection to place and learning more about the environment.

    It’s both ironic and understandable Australians want to be in natural environments to lessen their climate-related anxiety. Events such as the mega fires of 2019 and 2020 may be renewing Australians’ understanding and appreciation of nature’s value in enhancing the quality of their lives.

    There is now ample research showing green spaces improve psychological well-being.

    An impending epidemic
    Our research illuminates the profound, growing mental health burden on Australians.

    As the global temperature rises and climate-related disasters escalate in frequency and severity, this mental health burden will likely worsen. More people will suffer symptoms of PTSD, eco-anxiety, and more.

    Of great concern is that people are not seeking professional mental health care to cope with climate change concern. Rather, they are finding their own solutions. The lack of effective climate change policy and action from the Australian government is also likely adding to the collective despair.

    As Harriet Ingle and Michael Mikulewicz — a neuropsychologist and a human geographer from the UK — wrote in their 2020 paper:

    For many, the ominous reality of climate change results in feelings of powerlessness to improve the situation, leaving them with an unresolved sense of loss, helplessness, and frustration.

    It is imperative public health responses addressing climate change at the individual, community, and policy levels, are put into place. Governments need to respond to the health sector’s calls for effective climate related responses, to prevent a looming mental health crisis.

    If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline in Australia on 13 11 14.The Conversation

    By Dr Rhonda Garad, senior lecturer and research fellow in Knowledge Translation, Monash University; Dr Joanne Enticott, senior research fellow, Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation (MCHRI), Monash University, and Dr Rebecca Patrick, director, Sustainable Health Network, Deakin University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Emma Ginn and Annie Viswanathan on the effect of solitary confinement on immigration detainees and Dean Kingham on prisoners abandoned to close supervision centres

    Prolonged solitary confinement is an extreme form of treatment, prohibited in all circumstances under international law. Your article (Fifty-two prisoners in close supervision units ‘that may amount to torture’, 26 July) exposed this practice in highly restrictive prisons.

    Prolonged solitary confinement has in fact become routine in all prisons during the pandemic, with many individuals being confined alone or with a cellmate for 22 to 24 hours each day since March 2020.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Image description

    This cartoon features Olympic gymnast Simone Biles standing on a podium with the number one on it, holding a bouquet of flowers, smiling and waving, with a gold medal around her neck. This is accompanied by text that reads “Biles wins gold… for self-care”.

    By Ralph Underhill

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The number of calls made to a 24/7 counselling helpline for workers in parliament and MPs’ employees has risen over the past year. Callers have raised issues such as bullying and sexual misconduct.

    A union leader said the helpline is only treating the symptoms of endemic issues in Westminster and not the root cause.

    Systemic issues

    Figures obtained by the PA news agency show the number of calls has risen year on year.

    Jenny Symmons, chair of GMB’s branch for MPs’ staff, said that not all those who needed help were seeking it. And moreover:

    much more intervention is needed to address the systemic issues with bullying and harassment, sexual misconduct, unhealthy work patterns, and other problems that have permeated our workplace for decades

    She added:

    These figures do not show all those staff needing help in Parliament – only those seeking it.

    Parliament has made huge headway in supporting MPs’ staff pastorally. As more effort has been made to publicise the (Employee Assistance Programme) during the pandemic, more staff have made use of it.

    However, services offering mental health support are only treating the symptoms of cultural issues in Parliament – not the cause.

    Employee Assistance Programme

    The Employee Assistance Programme was set up in 2014 initially for MPs’ staff. But in October 2018, this was expanded to include staff of both the House of Commons and House of Lords administrations, members of the House of Commons, peers and their staff.

    A staff handbook for the Commons describes the helpline as offering 24/7 support, 365 days a year. It offers “practical advice and guidance as well as online, telephone and face-to-face counselling and support on a broad range of issues”.

    Findings

    Between 1 May 2020 and 30 April 2021, at least 1,073 calls were made to the helpline. 979 of those were from Commons staff and 94 from those who work for MPs. The vast majority of these were for mental health issues, followed by legal problems and work. But other concerns ranged from relationships to trauma, and whistleblowing.

    This had risen from at least 973 in the same period the year before, with 934 calls from House of Commons staff and 39 from MPs’ employees.

    The true figures may be higher as some were redacted to protect confidentiality. And the breakdown did not include House of Lords staff, peers or MPs.

    Garry Graham is deputy general secretary of the Prospect union, which represents staff working in the Houses of Parliament. He told PA:

    These figures show the magnitude of the effect a year of Covid pressure has had on parliamentary staff.

    The impact was amplified by the Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg’s insistence on physical attendance at a time when many of the lower paid cooks and cleaners were genuinely afraid that coming to work might put their health at risk.

    Staff wellbeing

    The wellbeing of staff was raised in the Commons on Thursday 8 July. Shadow Commons leader Thangam Debbonaire said there were concerns over former Conservative MP Rob Roberts potentially returning to the estate, despite an independent panel finding he sexually harassed a member of his team.

    Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle said the wellbeing of parliamentary staff, who number around 3,000, was a “top priority”. And he said he was pleased that they weren’t “suffering in silence”.

    He told PA:

    As staff begin to return to Parliament in the coming weeks, we will continue to encourage them to use the services of our onsite GP, mental health first aiders and health screening awareness programme – while also promoting the 24-hour helpline.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Day 509 of the pandemic. If you’re reading this letter, you still have some freedom. Don’t take it for granted. And don’t ask, why didn’t you warn me earlier? Don’t say, I would have resisted. That isn’t true. We don’t know how to resist. That’s why we bow our heads and follow the herd, looking for a consensus in the twitches that go up and down each other’s spines. Like beasts, we are terrified that when the wolf skulks in, the herd will dart and we’ll be left behind. There is strength in numbers, I know. That’s why you feel safe. But you aren’t. None of us are. And now you are reading these words, and the ground begins to sway. The chair is against the wall, it says. And you can’t look away anymore. Somehow, you always knew that these words would find you, and you know exactly what they mean. Everything has gone to shit! Yes, and we have to find our way back.

    Don’t think that because I’m not there with you in the Occupied Zone, I don’t get what’s going on. I see things more clearly because I’m here, free of the hysteria. You shouldn’t underestimate the pull of the herd. Its force is hypnotic, especially when we’re afraid. A child in danger doesn’t wonder whether he should listen to his mother. Threatened, he obeys her warnings. The words that she speaks go straight past his thinking mind, free of scrutiny, and get lodged in his subconscious. If they didn’t, he would soon end up dead. But the same thing happens when a child is told how to be a good boy and fit into the herd. Afraid of being left out, he doesn’t ask whether what he is told makes sense. He believes it. That’s how hypnosis works. Fear induces a trance that lets anyone with authority tell us what to do without us questioning the truth of what it is said. Once implanted, the commandments become dogma.

    When the World Health Organization announced that the spread of the virus was a global emergency, I was in a small town full of travellers from all over the place. If the virus was afoot, it was already here or would be soon. Called home by their government leaders, most people left. But some of us stayed. To me, it looked like we were going to watch flu deaths in real time that winter. Some nasty people wanted us all to be very afraid. Of course, it was too early to know whether the virus would be worse than the flu, and you might think that I was wrong. But all-cause mortality was no higher in 2020 than in recent years. Replaced by Covid-19, not only did the flu season vanish in many parts of the world, but most causes of death, from pneumonia to heart disease, were also blamed on Covid-19. You want to ask, what about the crowded hospitals? You want to scream, real people died, you know! I don’t deny that. Like its sister, SARS, this virus has killed people who would not otherwise have died, some of them young. I also know that in cities with bad smog like New Delhi and on Native reservations polluted by the mining industry, the virus has been especially deadly. But the numbers don’t lie. There was no global pandemic in 2020.

    Last spring, after the town here emptied out, local vigilantes started manning checkpoints on the access roads to keep away travellers. With all the restaurants and hotels closed, families went hungry for lack of work. Twice a week, I made pots of lentils and rice to serve at a food giveaway near the plaza, where the lines got longer as the pandemic wore on. You might say that all of this suffering was necessary to flatten the curve. But that doesn’t explain what has happened since then. You’ve been under curfews and lockdowns there and cut off from your friends. Masks are still de rigueur. Haven’t you wondered why I have it so much easier than you do? I can leave the house whenever I want. The town is overrun with tourists again and life is back to normal. Why should that be? The answer is simple: this is a second-world country without much of a middle class to destroy through bankruptcy. Put another way, most people here are too poor to steal from. This pandemic is about the transfer of wealth from the many to the few, also called piracy. Yes, the world’s overlords are pirates before anything else.

    In the first-world countries, we don’t live with our hands in the soil anymore. We stopped fighting for our land long ago. We are born on this planet but can’t claim a bit of it to put a roof over our heads. We’re all renters and borrowers in the grand scheme of things. Here, people still own the earth. It supports families across time. People are dollar-poor but land-rich, even if they have only a scrap that is their own. So they are hard to push around. There is still a lot of the Wild West here. The police have a role to play, but they are not the authority. It was the Cartel that decided when it was time to open the town again, not the state. The Cartel may be thugs, but they are part of the fabric of the culture. They are the blue-collar equivalent of our white-collar criminals. The difference is that the Cartel does not murder by proxy. It’s personal with them. When two of the vigilantes beat up a guy who had Cartel friends, the Cartel executed the leader of the vigilantes, and the rest of them disbanded and melted away. That was when the roadblocks came down and businesses started to open, including the Cartel’s many pharmacies, where it launders most of it money.

    Early on, a friend of mine wrote a message in the dust that coated the back windows of his van: Fear the vaccine, not the pandemic. And he was right. The vaccine is far worse than the pandemic. From the start, vaccination has been the goal. For that, the pandemic had to be dragged out. First, they exaggerated the number of Covid-19 deaths. The true survival rate is over ninety-nine percent for anyone younger than seventy and over ninety-five percent for the elderly. Then, when the number of deaths dropped, they wildly inflated case numbers by using a rigged test. Here, the test is too expensive, so only the tourists get it. Without mass testing, there were no false positives to shore up the panic. Another piece of the puzzle was to deny the existence of treatments so that the vaccines could be approved for emergency use. When Mexico City started treating patients with these known drugs, hospitalizations plummeted. You’re thinking, who would start a pandemic just to sell vaccines? But surely you have realized by now that the vaccines are not only about profit. Yes, our overlords are pirates, but they are also dictators. They want control. It stared with the masks, the curfews, and the lockdowns, and now they have us lining up to be injected with a potion that is outright killing people and injuring others. Next, they will force vaccine passports on us. Those who refuse vaccination will be excluded from the workplace and the marketplace. We will be cast as pariahs.

    Maybe you were hoping that the vaccines would set us free and that things would go back to normal. That is only because you can’t accept that people would be so evil. The players in this catastrophe held an event in 2019 that simulated the pandemic. You say that it was just a coincidence. They profited madly from the lockdowns and the vaccines. You say that they were being opportunistic. They published a book about how they are going to use the pandemic to enslave us. You say that I’m overreacting. But I’ve also heard you say that absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you can agree that there are people with absolute power afoot in this pandemic, then you must concede that they are absolutely corrupt. Because they have enough money to oversee unelected bodies like the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum, they have enough power to dictate the policies of our elected governments and to strip us of our rights. Make no mistake, these people have absolute power, and their plans for us are beyond evil. The next piece of the puzzle will be variants of the virus so that the emergency can be extended long enough to bankrupt the middle class, defeat our spirits, and soften us up for the fascist world order that is coming.

    I said that we have to find our way back from this madness. But I don’t know what steps are possible when most of the people who should be resisting don’t realize that they are under assault. At the same time, perhaps I should be optimistic since censorship is now so commonplace that it can’t be denied. Controlling the Covid-19 narrative by suspending social media accounts and deplatforming websites is as totalitarian as any tactic ever used by the Soviets or East Germans. People can see what is happening. It’s all out in the open. To be branded a conspiracy theorist is no longer to be identified as a lunatic but to be recognized as someone who can see the obvious: the Covid-19 narrative cannot brook descent and debate because it is built on lies.

    If we don’t resist now, our only hope is that the human spirit will save us. It will take time for that to happen, but no tyranny has ever withstood it. When things get bad enough, our souls will rebel. As Cohen wrote,

    Any system you contrive without us
    will be brought down
    We warned you before
    and nothing that you built has stood
    — Leonard Cohen, The Energy of Slaves (1973)

    It will be so again.

    The post The Chair Is Against the Wall: A Letter to the Occupied Zone  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • It’s been dubbed ‘tangping’ – shunning tough careers to chill out instead. But how is the Communist party taking the birth of this new counterculture?

    Name: Low-desire life.

    Age: People – young ones especially – have been rebelling, dropping out, rejecting the rat race for pretty much ever, since the rat race began. But in China, it’s becoming more common. On trend, you might say.

    Related: How hard does China work?

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have brought calls for a universal basic income. While it’s no silver bullet, they can allow workers say no to the most thankless, low-wage work, providing a platform from which to rebuild our bargaining power.

    AN INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL RAVENTÓS by Àngel Ferrero

    The economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have brought calls for a universal basic income (UBI) back into the spotlight — and so, too, criticisms of it. This is especially the case in Spain, where a more conditional “minimum living income” project introduced by the left-wing coalition government has been undermined by poor delivery and only limited take-up by those entitled to the scheme.

    A possible way forward comes from autonomous Catalonia. Following the recent elections there, the anti-capitalist Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP) has agreed to give its support to a government of the soft-left Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), through a pact which includes the approval of a pilot program for full UBI.

    Daniel Raventós is a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Barcelona, as well as the president of the Red Renta Básica. He spoke to Àngel Ferrero about the pilot, its limits and the potential uses of UBI.

    AF: You’ve been researching UBI for more than twenty years. How would you define it, in concise terms?

    DR: A universal and unconditional public monetary allowance.

    AF: Although UBI is not yet a reality, there have been several pilot projects. What have the results been?

    DR: There have been trial runs in many different geographical and political contexts, from Finland to Canada to Namibia. Not all these projects have been implemented in the same way, which sometimes makes it difficult to compare them.

    These experiments have many limitations. One of the main ones is that they can’t show some of the major effects UBI would have on society as a whole: in particular, increased bargaining power for workers and women. The people receiving the UBI in the pilot projects tend to be isolated from each other, so it’s hard to judge their aggregate effects.

    Clearly, planning your life with a UBI you expect to have for two or three years is something very different from planning your life with the expectation of a lifetime UBI. But these experiments do allow us to evaluate, with all the limitations I have mentioned, partial aspects such as the effects on mental health. In each of these cases, mental health improved. Which is no small thing.

    AF: But with a UBI, are the material conditions of existence guaranteed?

    DR: Not with this alone, of course.

    UBI must be understood as one policy measure, not as a complete economic policy unto itself.

    An economic policy includes fiscal, monetary, labor measures… and, for me, a maximum income, too. A few people having huge fortunes is a threat to the freedom of the majority — and you don’t even have to be a socialist or republican to recognize that.

    AF: In Catalonia, two parties recently reached an agreement for government, including a UBI pilot program. What is the status of the negotiations?

    DR: Well, the agreement talks about the implementation of a pilot plan in certain age groups of UBI in three temporary phases. This is a very moderate, very reasonable, very measured move — which has already sparked the ire of both the pro-independence Catalan right and Spanish monarchists. And also of a certain kind of left who have great respect for, and servility toward, the status quo. It is funny to see the allergies this proposal provokes among some politicians and technocrats, even just when it’s a trial scheme.

    As far as I know, both the [anti-capitalist] CUP, which had UBI very clearly in its electoral program and made it one of the main axes of its campaign, and the [soft-left] ERC, which referred to the UBI as a longer-term measure, seem to be standing firm for this policy.

    AF: How could such a measure be financed?

    DR: Catalonia has nothing like fiscal sovereignty. The financing proposal that Jordi Arcarons, Lluís Torrens, and I have been investigating with some variations in recent years is based on a major reform of personal income tax, so that 80 percent would pay less tax with UBI and the richest 20 percent would pay more. Catalonia does not control 100 percent of income tax. That’s the way things are. Many people who are for a Catalan Republic consider UBI, along with other clearly progressive measures, are a good reason to want to become independent from the Spanish monarchy.

    Even so, it’s also true that the Catalan government does have the power to pursue a much more ambitious economic policy than the one it’s carried out in recent years. One of the aforementioned economists, Lluís Torrens, more than two years ago proposed a series of measures within the limits of Catalonia’s current autonomous powers, to finance UBI. Very briefly, these included: a wealth tax, reversing the inheritance and gift tax to 2008 levels, increasing environmental taxes, gambling tax revenues, and some modifications to personal income tax.

    AF: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to basic income being widely considered as a proposal to overcome this crisis. What are the advantages of basic income compared to other measures?

    DR: Conditional benefits for the poor have for many years proven to be insufficient at best and mostly catastrophic. Subsidies for the poor in Catalonia itself — the guaranteed citizen income — and the Spanish central government’s minimum living income have been a disaster. The former has been years in the making, the latter was implemented in June 2020 as a response (let’s call it that) to the pandemic-era social situation. Everyone, apart from its designers, has found serious flaws in it. If these are especially bad cases, the problems with conditional subsidies have been known for some time. Poor rollout can make things worse, of course, but the root problem is the design.

    What are the problems with conditional benefits?

    They have been known for a long time: the poverty trap, the high administrative and management costs, the stigmatization they involve, the insufficient coverage with respect to the population they ought to cover, and what is known as non-take-up, which is the segment of people who do not apply for a benefit even though they meet all the eligibility requirements and are thus entitled to receive it. In some cases, non-take-up is as high as 60 percent!

    The UBI overcomes these problems of conditional benefits — all of them. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why people who’d been opposed to the UBI recognized at the beginning of the pandemic that it ought to be considered.

    In the Basque Autonomous Community, which has one of the best subsidies for the poor in the European Union (nothing to do with the minimum living income or benefits anywhere else in Spain), a popular legislative initiative for a UBI has been launched. This is promoted, among others, by people who advise benefits applicants and are thus very knowledgeable about the reality of the subsidies for the poor, here. They are very competent and technically very knowledgeable people. Their conclusion is clear, and this is what they have stated: the Income Guarantee Payment, which is the name given to the Basque regional subsidy for the poor, has failed. Hence their support for UBI.

    AF: Feminists have defended, and also criticized, basic income. What are the feminist arguments in favor of UBI?

    DR: Well, the arguments offered by feminists are very diverse. At the risk of leaving out some important points, I think we can summarize these as follows. First, UBI would mean greater freedom for women. Already Mary Wollstonecraft pointed out that the attainment of rights, citizenship, and a better status for women, both married and unmarried, required their economic independence. Second, many women today caught in the poverty trap under the system of conditional benefits could escape it with a UBI, thus greatly mitigating the feminization of poverty.

    The economic independence that a UBI would allow would make it possible for many women to escape more easily from relationships where there is violence and abuse, as well as to leave paid jobs where sexual harassment or abuse occurs.

    Third, with financing that favors the majority of the non-rich population, such as that proposed by Jordi, Lluís, and myself, there is a transfer of money from men to women. This is consistent with what we know about the worse social, labor, and economic conditions that women have on average compared to men.

    AF: One of the arguments that you have had to combat most over the years is the idea that it would be better to guarantee full employment than UBI, also because a UBI would discourage job seeking, and even the value of work itself. Why?

    DR: Being a supporter of full employment is admirable, almost heroic in today’s conditions, but for me what’s interesting is to make clear whether we are talking about full employment in semi-slavery or in decent conditions. In the Spanish case, it should be remembered that from 1978 to today, this country has been the world champion among the OECD economies for joblessness: the place where the unemployment rate has exceeded 15 percent in thirty years out of forty-two.

    There is no doubt that there are parts of society with an employment-centric view, upholding the “dignity of work.” For me, the dignified thing is having a guaranteed material existence.

    Many authors, as different in time and intellectual hinterland as Aristotle and Marx, had no doubt that wage labor is “a limited servitude.” Marx spoke of the alienation of wage labor because, he said, as soon as there is no physical or any other kind of coercion, one flees from labor like the plague.

    Many think employment has special virtues: the most frequent being a sense of identity and contribution to the community, the dignity it confers, and a structuring of time, among others. A lot of things are mixed up in these statements. Job loss usually leads to terrible situations such as the loss of a home due to the impossibility of paying rent, as well as to serious depression and general deterioration of mental health, even to a sense of loss of identity. There is no doubt about it.

    Drawing the conclusion that people are less “happy” than when they did have a job is also defensible. Losing a job due to arbitrary corporate power, to a general or sectoral economic crisis — or for any other reason outside the newly unemployed person’s own will — is not going to make that person happier. That’s obvious, trivial even. But only to this extent can we relate involuntary job loss to unhappiness.

    If someone is faced with the choice of having a horrible paying job or a miserable life because of the lack of said job, it is easy to understand why they’d choose the former option.

    AF: Has there been resistance from the unions?

    DR: A lot. And there still is. There are exceptions and perhaps some cracks are opening up in unions’ monolithism against the UBI. We will see. I have been a member of a union for forty-five years, I have participated in union leadership and work councils for many years in the past, so I think I know this world very well. Over recent decades I’ve seen all sorts of arguments, I think I can summarize them as followed.

    It is argued, against UBI, that trade unions would lose strength because it would weaken their potential for collective action — although it is accepted that the UBI increases workers’ individual bargaining power. It is customary to add that the UBI could be used as a pretext to dismantle the welfare state, mainly public education and health care. It has also been argued that employers would exert pressure to reduce wages, since they would argue that part of their salaries would be covered by the UBI. Another argument is that, being a proposal that uncouples material existence from employment and the rights linked to it, UBI is unacceptable for the world of trade unionism — which, after all, makes work central to its worldview.

    The UBI — another objection from trade unionists maintains — could numb or appease the working class’s capacity for struggle by assuring it a minimum existence. This would mean that employers could make and unmake their plans with less trouble; this, in turn, would result in greater exploitation of the working class because the passivity that the UBI would bring would end up damaging their wage and social-welfare conditions. Finally, another trade union objection is that what we need to be standing for is full employment: giving people paid work is the right solution because that is what gives us dignity, and all the rest is mere palliatives.

    As I have answered this last objection already, I will briefly respond to the various others. The fact that individual bargaining power increases does not mean that collective bargaining power should suffer. In case of a long strike, a UBI could act as a resistance fund: a long strike is very difficult to sustain without a resistance fund because of the significant loss of wages in direct proportion to the number of days on strike.

    On the alleged dismantling of the welfare state. The right-wing advocates of the UBI do seek to dismantle the welfare state in exchange for UBI, but the left-wing advocates of the UBI seek a redistribution of income from the richest to the rest of the population and the maintenance, and even the strengthening, of the welfare state. Mixing the very different and opposing ways of defending the UBI of the Right and the Left is perhaps a propagandistic way of confusing the debate, but it has little to do with a rational and sincere discussion.

    It’s obvious that employers will bid to try to reduce wages using UBI. Or rather, they’ll seek to do that whether or not UBI is there. But that is part of what in times past was called, and in today’s times should be called, class struggle.

    AF: In Jacobin Michal Rozworski asked what the ultimate point of UBI was. I pass his question over to you: if there were a social movement broad and strong enough to implement an UBI, wouldn’t it make more sense to make much more ambitious demands?

    DR: The UBI is not a socialist program, nor is it a whole economic policy. In the face of any proposal for improvement, one can always say that it is insufficient and that it does not put an end to capitalism, for example. Or that it is possible to go further. That is irrefutable.

    But let me make a general comment.

    The UBI is a reform of the currently existing capitalism, it is not a measure that would do away with it.

    A capitalism like the present one, with a UBI, would undoubtedly still be capitalism, but it would be a capitalism notably different from the capitalism we know today.

    With the Fordist pact the working classes gave up control over production in favor of ex-post, conditional measures. They did that in a capitalism very different from today’s. I think that the UBI would allow the working class and the vast majority of women to significantly increase their bargaining power. Because by unconditionally guaranteeing people’s social existence, a UBI would enable the ability to “say no” to crappy jobs. For those who stand for freedom, this increase in bargaining power is something that alone deserves to be defended.

    ______________________________________________________

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Daniel Raventós is a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Barcelona.

    ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Àngel Ferrero is a journalist and translator, and a regular contributor to Público, El Salto, and Catarsi magazine.

    The post Basic Income Will Increase Workers’ Bargaining Power appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Thousands of people with a mental disorder are currently in prison when they could be receiving specialist treatment, a royal college has said.

    Mental health

    Up to 8,000 prisoners – around 10% of the current prison population in England and Wales – may have been eligible for a community sentence or a suspended prison sentence with a mental health treatment requirement (MHTR), but a lack of funding means services were unable to deliver them, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

    It estimates that 1,600 people with a mental health disorder serving a prison sentence of under one year are eligible for an MHTR and would have better outcomes, while a further 6,400 serving a sentence of one to four years might also meet the criteria. The college argues that two-thirds of these mentally ill people who are given a short sentence instead of a treatment order reoffend within a year, compared with a third of men and 15% of women given a community sentence with a treatment requirement.

    As part of a new report, the college is now calling for £12m of government funding to ensure that courts can put in place treatment orders for all those who may benefit, and is calling on psychiatrists, regardless of specialty, to deliver them.

    Overlooked

    Professor Pamela Taylor, lead author of the new study, said:

    Too many people with mental disorders who get involved with criminal justice are being failed by a system that overlooks the use of mental health treatment requirements.

    Sending them to prison for quite minor offences may be dangerous for the offender-patients and may harm the wider community too. Reoffending rates are high when people are locked away for a short period, while their problems remain unsolved or increase.

    Thousands of people could benefit from structured, formally supervised care and treatment in the community, but mental health services don’t have the resources they need to deliver mental health treatment requirements at scale.

    With this guidance, psychiatrists are committing themselves to working more and more effectively with this group of people but the Government must also play its part and give mental health services the funding they need.

    Costly and inneffective

    According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the cost of sending someone to prison for a year is £35,000, putting savings from treatment orders at at least £56m a year. The call for more funding comes as charities and key organisations have launched a new campaign with the aim of expanding the network of early support hubs for young people suffering mental health issues.

    YoungMinds, Mind, Youth Access, the Children and Young People’s Coalition on Mental Health, the Centre for Mental Health, and the Children’s Society said there was growing evidence of the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic on young people’s mental health, while data shows demand for services is growing.

    The groups want to see more early support hubs to give young people easy-access, local support without the need for a referral or an appointment. As well as offering psychological therapies, the hubs provide guidance in areas such as housing and employment.

    Previously published data from a survey of 35 NHS trust leaders has found there are rising numbers of children and young people attending A&E with self-harm or suicidal thoughts as a result of the pandemic. NHS waiting times data has also shown that referrals for specialist help were 72% higher in September 2020 than they were in the same month the previous year.

    Early help

    Emma Thomas, chief executive of YoungMinds, said:

    When a young person isn’t able to access support early enough for their mental health, things often get much worse. For years we have heard of children and young people reaching crisis, starting to self-harm or refusing to go to school before they get the help they need.

    There have been improvements to mental health support in recent years, but with the unprecedented difficulties that so many have faced as a result of the pandemic, it’s clear that there is an urgent need for more action.

    What we need is a system of support outside of NHS services, where young people can get help locally without needing to wait or reach a threshold for treatment.

    Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind, said:

    Young people have been among those hardest hit by the pandemic, especially those who have pre-existing mental health problems.

    Over the past year, young people have had to deal with a huge amount of challenges, change and disruption to their daily lives, including partial school closures, loneliness and isolation, and difficulties accessing mental health services.

    We’re pleased to be collaborating with YoungMinds and other charity partners to support the Fund the Hubs campaign to make sure there is better access to early mental health support for young people.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Tory Government snubbing Universal Credit proves we should free Scotland from UK

    By: Annie Brown

    A Caribbean friend of mine taught me a new phrase this week – “a cockroach smoke your pipe.” He was using it to describe being poor in the Caribbean – in other words being royally screwed. It’s an apt description of how many people feel right now as they await the end of furlough and the spectre of economic ruin.

    When the pandemic began, scientists locked themselves away in labs in dogged pursuit of the common goal of a vaccine – and the profits it would bring.

    The Government, a Tory one no less, dug deep to stop a nation of workers falling off a financial precipice.

    Now the vaccine sees us climbing down the tiers while the financial safety net of furlough is about to be pulled from under millions of people.

    But there is an alternative, a vaccine if you like, against the threat of crippling poverty – a Universal Basic Income. It’s a simple notion, the human right to a guaranteed income, regardless of social and work insecurity. Ronnie Cowan, the SNP MP for Inverclyde, has tirelessly ­championed this cause but has admitted it is no “magic wand.” But he said: “It is not discriminatory and doesn’t stigmatise – it’s a policy that is dripping in humanity.” The benefits system as it stands is not fit for purpose and is being used as a stick to beat the most vulnerable with.

    Its implementation is punitive and callous, inefficient with delays, sanctions and heinous caps like the “rape clause”.

    This week it emerged that disabled man Maxwell Quinton, from Glenrothes, left a handwritten note begging his family to tell the Department for Work and Pensions what they are “doing to people” after having his Personal Independence Payment stopped last month.

    His crime was failing to meet the deadline to submit his bank statements to the DWP and he paid for the mistake with his life. It is the stuff of Dickensian nightmares, with a country of millionaires and billionaires grinding the poor to dust. For decades I have had a good job and a decent wage and I am thankful for it every day because I have watched the suffering money worries bring. My dad was unemployed for over a year when I was a teenager and I saw him disappear into a vacuum of stress.

    There is nothing like the fear of losing it all, everything you have laboured for and dreamed of, because of a precarious capitalist system interested only in the insatiable appetite of the rich.

    Those at the bottom are scrambling for copper pennies while the rich get richer. A couple without children on benefits is left with only £8 a day after bills in this country. Before we fall back on the trope of the feckless poor, with their fag habits and big tellies, the truth is a universal basic income (UBI) brings people back to work. There are councils in Scotland ready to launch pilot schemes for UBI ,with Glasgow City Council behind a project which guarantees £213 a month.

    Cowan is campaigning for them to be allowed to give it a try.

    For the last two years, 125 people in the US city of Stockton received monthly payments of £450 a month in just such a pilot scheme. At the start of the project, 28 per cent of the recipients were in full-time work. That rose to 40 per cent a year later.

    This is because mental health and self esteem improved and, even with such a small amount guaranteed, recipients were freed from the paralysis of poverty. The SNP, the Greens and some Lib Dems support UBI but the Tory administration wading in sleaze has no inclination to indulge the poor.

    That should tell us everything we need to know about freeing our country from the concrete boots of a Tory Government dragging us below the water line. And Cowan is right, it is about decency and humanity. It’s about Maxwell Quinton and so many like him, who would rather die than live under the cosh of the system which
    failed him.

    The post Universal Basic Income could be a vaccine against poverty in Scotland appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Athletes around the globe are voicing support for tennis superstar Naomi Osaka, who withdrew from the French Open after being fined and threatened with disqualification for declining to take part in press conferences due to their effect on her mental health. Prominent athletes, from Stephen Curry to Serena Williams, have come forward to support 23-year-old Osaka, who is a four-time Grand Slam tournament winner. The escalating fines and criticism Osaka faced from tennis officials were “a disproportionate response” to her actions, says Amira Rose Davis, an assistant professor of history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Penn State and co-host of the sports podcast “Burn It All Down.” She adds that Black women athletes are often subjected to insensitive questioning from the media that can perpetuate racist and sexist narratives. “The media is overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly older, overwhelmingly male,” Davis says.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

    Athletes around the globe are voicing support for tennis superstar Naomi Osaka, who withdrew from the French Open Monday after being fined and threatened with disqualification for declining to take part in news conferences due to their effect, she said, on her mental health. In a statement posted on Twitter, the 23-year-old Osaka wrote, quote, “The truth is that I have suffered long bouts of depression since the US Open in 2018 and I have had a really hard time coping with that. Anyone that knows me knows I’m introverted, and anyone that has seen me at the tournaments will notice that I’m often wearing headphones as that helps dull my social anxiety.” Naomi Osaka went on to write, “I am not a natural public speaker and get huge waves of anxiety before I speak to the world’s media. I get rally nervous and find it stressful to always try to engage,” she said.

    Prominent athletes have come forward to support Naomi, from Steph Curry to Venus and Serena Williams. Tennis legend Billie Jean King wrote on Twitter, “It’s incredibly brave that Naomi Osaka has revealed her truth about her struggle with depression. Right now, the important thing is that we give her the space and time she needs. We wish her well,” she said. Sports researchers estimate one-third of athletes suffer from a mental health crisis at some point in their careers.

    Osaka, who has a Japanese mother and a Haitian American father, is a four-time winner of Grand Slam tennis tournaments. She drew headlines last year when she wore the names of Black victims of police brutality on her face masks on the sidelines of the U.S. Open.

    We’re joined by Amira Rose Davis. She’s assistant professor of history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Penn State University. She’s currently working on a book entitled Can’t Eat a Medal: The Lives and Labors of Black Women Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow. She’s co-host of the sports podcast Burn It All Down.

    Amira Rose Davis, welcome back to Democracy Now!

    AMIRA ROSE DAVIS: Yeah, thank you for having me.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you take — it’s great to have you with us. Can you take us through just the chronology of Naomi Osaka saying she didn’t want to participate in these news conferences, that she was suffering from depression, was very nervous about them, and then the response of the opens — it’s the French Open, Australia, etc., all together — at the French Open, saying they might expel her, and they were fining her?

    AMIRA ROSE DAVIS: Yeah, absolutely. Last week, before the tournament started, Naomi took to social media to issue a statement saying, “Heads up, I won’t be doing the post-game pressers. I don’t want to engage in that way. For mental health concerns, I think it’s best if I don’t do this. I recognize that this comes with a fine. I am prepared to pay this fine. I hope that the Slams use this fine for mental health organizations or for mental health initiatives.” And that was really her statement. She was trying to get ahead of it.

    The reaction to that on social media was a range of things. But then the Slams, as you pointed to — the French, the Australian, the U.S. and Wimbledon — all came together to issue a joint statement, that the first few lines said, “We hope you’re well. We care about mental health concerns. We want to support you,” and then very quickly said, “But we also want to remind you of the code of conduct, and not only this first $15,000 fine that you got, but we will escalate that fine.” And then they also threatened — they also said that it could elevate to the level of being defaulted from the tournament.

    And I think that this reaction really was like throwing, you know, a spark on the fire — you know I love fire references because of the podcast. But it really was, because for all of the Slams to come together to do this statement, when they’re often quiet on other things — like right now there’s literally somebody who is on trial for domestic abuse, right? — we don’t get the same — like, this was a disproportionate response.

    And that compelled — it shifted the conversation to mental health concerns in a particular way, that only was solidified when Naomi put out a second statement at the beginning of this week that said, “I didn’t want to be a distraction. This has now blown up. And I think the best thing for me to do is withdraw completely from this tournament.” She didn’t end there, however. She went on to say she followed up privately with the Slams to talk about this more. But beyond that, she wanted to have further conversations to ensure that there was more awareness and more support for mental health concerns around athletes. And that was her statement on Monday. And then, since then, we’ve had a variety of conversations around the subject.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor, I wanted to ask you about the response. There’s been sort of a disconnect from the response of other tennis players versus other athletes. Could you talk about how fellow athletes have responded, both within the tennis world and outside?

    AMIRA ROSE DAVIS: Yeah, I think many athletes have come out and applauded her, have wished her well, have talked about their own mental health struggles. Tennis players on the circuit have now been getting these questions. You saw how Venus Williams chose to answer it yesterday by saying, “You know, listen. We’re all dealing with it in certain ways. The way I deal with it is that I know that the press can’t play as well as I can. Nobody’s going to hold a candle to me. And that’s how I deal with it. But we all have our ways of coping.” Serena said, “I just want to give her a hug.” So, I think that within tennis you have seen support, and outside of tennis you’ve seen support.

    I actually feel like the disconnect is happening because there’s like three strands of conversation happening. I think that, one, athletes are having a conversation about mental health. Specifically Black athletes are having a conversation about, you know, what their role is as professional athletes. And then journalists are having a conversation about the — you know, do these pressers matter? What does it look like to be in a changing landscape of their field? And that has been a central kind of conversation, as well. And then lay fans have either said she needs to go play, or she needs to buckle up, and this is entitlement. And there’s a lot of people who also have recognized a strength in this and appreciate moving the needle on mental health. So I think we’re seeing multiple conversations happening, overlapping, of course, on social media. But the support from athletes has really been to talk about their own struggles or say, “Oh, it hits close to home,” or offer support.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And to what degree do you think that these — because this is something now that’s pretty prevalent in all sports, these televised press conferences right after games or matches. It’s almost as if it’s more of an entertainment value than a real news value. And it’s more of an attempt to promote a particular sport economically rather than actually journalists ferreting out critical information. To what degree are the journalists playing into this situation of looking always for conflict or for a dramatic narrative that they can push a story, and, of course, then having to even hone in more on these athletes with tough questions?

    AMIRA ROSE DAVIS: Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is a really key question. Historically, these pressers have absolutely been to grow the league, to get interest, to have partnerships with sponsors. And that’s the function they’ve served, particularly growing leagues. Women’s leagues have used this access in really important ways in terms of growth.

    One of the conversations that has been happening is, is that — has it outlived its function? Because many people feel like it’s redundant questions, it’s poking, it’s prodding. I talked to my co-host Jessica Luther and many journalists who were wrestling with this in other ways, because I think that they see a possibility in these pressers, where there’s access, where there’s not prescribed questions, where there is a chance to actually perhaps hold people accountable or ask questions that might have been otherwise pushed aside by handlers. And I think that that is really valid, but also an idealized way of how these pressers actually function.

    To your point, the media is overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly older, overwhelmingly male. There’s a fight for marginalized sports reporters to even get in those rooms. And I think that the dynamic within those spaces doesn’t live up to this kind of ideal of accountability and access, and oftentimes becomes about quickly churning out and perpetuating narratives, asking the same question. And then it sticks, and it’s there.

    One of the things Naomi said was, “I’ve been battling depression since the U.S. Open in 2018” — right? — which was when she faced Serena and launched onto the scene, won her — won that Slam. But, of course, there was a narrative about Serena’s actions during the match. She was crying. Fans were booing her. And every time they play, every time she’s back at the U.S. Open, this gets regurgitated. There’s questions about it. And I think it’s very telling that she pointed that out, because it points to this point about how these narratives — right? — continue and continue and continue, with very little stopping to consider what harm or what cost to the athlete.

    AMY GOODMAN: And yet it was Serena who was among the superstars who came out in support of Naomi Osaka. This is what she said.

    SERENA WILLIAMS: The only thing I feel is that I feel for Naomi. I feel like I wish I could give her a hug, because I know what it’s like. Like I said, I’ve been in those positions. We have different personalities, and people are different. Not everyone is the same. I’m thick. You know, other people are thin. So, everyone is different, and everyone handles things differently. So, you know, you just have to let her handle it the way she wants to, in the best way that she thinks she can. And that’s the only thing I can say. I think she’s doing the best that she can.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Serena Williams. And, of course, the Williams sisters really helping, among a few other African Americans in tennis, to break the color barrier in what was a really white sport. And the significance, Professor, of Naomi Osaka, a descendant of — well, her mother is Japanese, her father, Haitian American. She is a Black woman who is breaking so many barriers. I think she’s the highest-paid woman athlete in the world right now. What this means, the kind of pressure being brought on her? And if young African American women see even her, she gets fined — she even said, on those fines that the French Open applied to her, she asked that they be given to mental health organizations, the money they made off of her.

    AMIRA ROSE DAVIS: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there’s two really important things here that you just brought up. One, absolutely, Naomi has been in the tennis space that we know has had a great deal of scrutiny for Venus and Serena Williams, for Sloane, for Coco Gauff, for Naomi herself, in a myriad of ways. And I think that entering into that space, you already saw moments where Naomi tried to disrupt kind of conventional narratives or push back at even framing of questions. When people said, “Oh, you’re Japanese,” she would always remind them that she was Haitian. She insisted on her Blackness being recognized. When she wore masks, and Tom Rinaldi asked her in the post-game, “Well, what does it mean? You know, what do these masks mean to you?” — and she had explained this and talked about this before — and she said, “Well, what does it mean to you?” She flipped it, you know, back on the reporter. And I think that these were the ways that she had already slightly disrupted, or when she stopped playing last August with a number of other athletes and said, “There’s more important things to do than for you to watch me play tennis.” So we’ve already seen her take on this role and kind of push the status quo in these ways.

    But I think it really is important to map this onto two other conversations. One is Black athletes who are continuing to insist on their humanity being recognized, who continue to say, “We’re not just here to entertain you,” and to push back on what is seen as entitlement or what people are owed of their labor. And athletes are saying, “My labor is — my athleticism is on the court. But you’re already privy to my weight, to my height, to my injury history, to my body, and then also to my mind with these probing questions.” And whether it’s protesting or speaking out about fan abuse, which is what we’re seeing increasingly, as well, or this conversation that Naomi is having, the underlying point that they’re pushing back on through these moments is to say, “We are fully human, and this is our job, and we don’t have to actually just go along with racial abuse, or we don’t have to sacrifice our mental health.” And I think that’s a really important through line that we see happening here. And so, you can look at people like Marshawn Lynch, Kyrie Irving, Natasha Cloud, who refused to do WNBA pressers unless they were about gun violence and police brutality, as a kind of longer history of that.

    But that second part about Black women is also really important, too. There’s ongoing conversations about Black women’s mental health. We saw this topic also come up when Meghan Markle disclosed her depression, her anxiety. And I think that this is a really important growing conversation. Some people — some social scientists have called it a mental health crisis, that the trope of a strong Black woman who’s tasked with doing labor, who’s simultaneously hypervisible and invisible, means that there’s really high rates of depression, of anxiety, and too often not enough mechanisms for help — a very low number of Black women therapy providers, for instance. And so, I think that part, that point — right? — of what this conversation does, how it moves the needle and how these Black women celebrities and athletes can play a really important role in pushing that conversation, as well.

    AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much, Amira Rose Davis, for joining us, assistant professor of history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Penn State University, co-host of the sports podcast Burn It All Down. And, boy, what Naomi said in her silence last year at the U.S. Open, donning seven masks, each bearing the name of a Black person who was killed: Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Philando Castile and Tamir Rice — almost all killed by police.

    When we come back, we look at the link between mass shootings and domestic violence. Back in 30 seconds.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • We should not underestimate the financial hardship young people and students face due to high levels of debt, rising levels of mental health problems and low job prospects.

    By: Louis Strappazzon

    Students would benefit substantially from a Universal Basic Income (UBI), which is a model of citizen social security that gives everyone a regular and unconditional basic income per week or month as a safety net. It places trust in people, as vitally it is not means-tested and you can spend it in your best interests. Many existing means of social support will be kept, such as Child Benefit. No one who needs help will miss out. It would allow young people to take new opportunities. Students would be able to focus on their studies.

    Student Union Motion

    As a postgraduate student at the University of Manchester, I know how hard the past year has been for young people and how much a UBI would benefit them, just like many other groups in society. It is why I decided to table a policy motion at the University of Manchester Students’ Union (SU) Senate in May, which passed with 83% in favour, 7% against and 10% abstentions.

    Fellow students agreed that universities should be run like social institutions that look after their students and local communities. They act like cold-hearted businesses that care more for profit than student experience and welfare, a common theme at the university regarding its response to issues such as racism and mental health.

    The policy means the SU will promote UBI at national student level, and that the SU will push the university to research economic ideas like UBI which would help to diminish poverty, mental health problems, and reliance on precarious work.

    UBI is only one policy out of many that is needed to create a fairer society.

    Why UBI?

    There are many reasons as to why UBI would benefit students massively. From lowering mental health problems caused by financial anxieties to allowing more time to concentrate on their studies.

    Another is that job prospects have imploded and it is tough for many students to find a job from their degree. In March 2020, the Institute of Student Employers found that 27% of graduate recruiters would be recruiting fewer graduates in the near future. Between July and September 2020, youth unemployment had increased by 15% from pre-pandemic levels. A universal basic income would diminish economic precariousness caused by unemployment and unstable work substantially.

    This new socio-economic stability would mean less reliance on universities’ highly means-tested and complicated financial help schemes, such as the Living Cost Support Fund at the University of Manchester, which asks for financial checks galore. Whilst they are happy to take your fees with no checks whatsoever.

    A UBI would provide everyone a stress-free financial safety net, something that universities simply do not offer. This means greater opportunities for all young people, not just those who attend university.

    Children currently living in poverty – such as the 200,000 children in Greater Manchester – will potentially be able to go onto higher education, widening university participation. The fact that around 620,000 people in Manchester alone are in poverty shows how valuable a guarantee to be able to pay for food, rent, and bills would be. It would significantly change people’s lives for the better.

    Evidence of UBI Benefits

    There have been multiple studies that have proven this centuries-old idea necessary to combat poverty and economic precariousness.

    The pandemic made it clear as day that inequality is a large factor in death.

    A pilot between 2017 and 2018 in Finland showed that employment and school attendance increased, whilst stress, depression, hospitalisations, and indebtedness decreased with a UBI of £490 a month. Another example is a pilot that happened in Stockton, California. In March 2021, the results showed increased wellbeing, financial stability, and even greater job prospects.

    A universal basic income would provide everyone with a safety net and would eliminate the majority of extreme poverty in the UK. According to a study by economist Karl Widerquist, by keeping other benefits such as Child Benefit and a UBI of only £148 a week would mean families below the poverty line would fall from 16% to 4% in the UK. Child and elderly poverty would all but disappear. In turn, society would become more equal as a basic income becomes a right.

    Student Action

    A UBI, alongside other ideas, such as free or cheap public services, has the potential to diminish poverty and socio-economic insecurities significantly. Students and young people have the power to change the world because of our capacity to mobilise and as many of us have the belief that a more equal world is possible. That is why students need to promote socio-economic alternatives like UBI and get these ideas noticed in student groups, such as through passing SU motions. Young people have the power to influence politics and to improve not just our own lives, but all those in society that need help.

    The post Why Students Should Support Universal Basic Income appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • NHS mental health services already have worrying ties to the police. And now, damning new information has come to light. Counter-terror police have been working with community mental health teams in so-called ‘Vulnerability Support Hubs’. Mental health patients who are also considered at risk of potential ‘extremism’ are referred to the police. The police then follow up and monitor said individuals.

    As part of the Investigations Unit’s #ResistBigBrother series, we’ve looked at the growing criminalisation of Muslims under counter-terror strategies. Now, we turn to police exploitation of mental health services for surveillance strategies.

    What are these ‘Vulnerability Support Hubs’?

    Medact, a non-profit, has uncovered information on these hubs through a freedom of information request. Its report found that these hubs have assessed thousands of people. While a pilot version of the hubs ran during 2016-2017, they’re now being rolled out under the name Project Cicero.

    Medact found that:

    Most of the individuals assessed at the hubs are people who have been referred to Prevent whom the police suspect may have mental health conditions.

    These individuals have mental health assessments carried out in the presence of police. The police subsequently remain involved in the patients’ care.

    Medact research manager Hilary Aked summarised:

    It is very clear from explicit statements in the documents that we obtained that police are asking health workers to surveil patients. They use the word monitoring; they talk about the need to establish what they call tripwires, which essentially means that something would trigger the referral if certain behaviours or certain speech is done by the patient. And that’s something which counter-terrorism police advise health workers to be aware of. So there they are performing a surveillance duty for the police.

    In these Vulnerability Support Hubs, mental health workers:

    • Determine if individuals are at risk of being a terrorist in the future.
    • Monitor patients’ speech and behaviours for signs of radicalisation.
    • Engage in apparent programmes of ‘deradicalisation’.

    These policies are all in line with the Home Office’s Prevent programme, which itself works on the idea of ‘pre-crime.’

    Lack of transparency

    The problem of consent rears its head here. Aked explains:

    People are referred to Prevent, you know, often without their knowledge and without their consent. And from there, we think they may be referred to a Vulnerability Support Hub, without their knowledge or consent.

    Indeed, the report states that:

    the data shows that Muslims are disproportionately referred to the hubs, again in line with the wider Prevent programme.

    It’s plain that the Vulnerability Support Hubs target Muslims. They also further complicate the problem of the standard of care Muslim mental health patients receive. Care that should be free from racist assumptions and prioritise patient confidentiality and safety.

    National security

    The Canary reached out to the Department for Health and Social Care for its view on this new information. The department responded:

    Healthcare practitioners recognise Prevent as part of their safeguarding duties and with over 300,000 patient contacts every day, the NHS has an important role to play in preventing vulnerable people from being drawn into terrorism.

    A key part of Prevent is to enable frontline staff to recognise and safeguard individuals at risk from all types of radicalisation, referring them to pathways for appropriate support.

    When we discuss ‘safeguarding’ in relation to counter-terrorism, however, it isn’t about safeguarding at all. It becomes an issue of national security. And another concern is the lack of transparency around national security strategies.

    Aked explained to us:

    Often national security is used as a reason for blanket lack of transparency on issues that need to be in the public eye and need to be publicly debated. That secrecy can provide a cover for problematic practices and a lack of accountability. And I think that’s what’s going on with these hubs.

    Medact struggled to get information on what the hubs are and how they work:

    Their activities have largely remained shrouded in secrecy, with very limited information publicly available. Therefore, the hubs’ work has been subject to almost no scrutiny from the media, scholars or the public. This lack of transparency is itself a major ethical concern since it severely limits possibilities for proper accountability

    What does this ask of mental health workers?

    Another severe implication of Prevent involvement in mental health support is the boundaries it asks mental health workers to cross. Under this model, NHS professionals would have to determine what may trigger a referral to Prevent. Again, the problem is that Prevent operates on a pre-crime basis. That means it targets, and potentially criminalises, people who may commit a crime but haven’t yet done so.

    Aked told us about their hope that mental health workers would push back against this added pressure:

    I think we would hope that health workers would be… pushing back against the further integration of security professionals, because the police’s fundamental mission is very different to that of healthcare. We don’t think any good comes from muddying the waters there between those two very different kinds of missions.

    Aked also made it clear that this added burden for mental health workers is rather beyond their capacity and remit:

    …we think they’ve been put in a really unacceptable position by government, which is essentially trying to corrupt health workers and make them an arm of the surveillance state…obviously, health workers, do share information if there’s a legitimate public interest, or some immediate threat of harm. But when we’re talking about pre-crime the thresholds for sharing information are not there.

    Breeding suspicion based on racism

    Moreover, there’s one fundamental issue with the Vulnerability Support Hubs. It’s that they rely on understandings of terrorism, extremism, and counter-terror that have a history of inaccuracy and racism:

    Often the concerns of counter-terrorism police are quite spurious, very racialised, and that’s another reason these Vulnerability Support Hubs seem to have been created is that they actually just help police access health information.

    In other words, Prevent’s pre-crime remit alone did not allow police to access information on individuals suspected of terrorism. But with the existence of these hubs, police now have access to patients’ private information.

    The hubs are a way for Prevent to continue to spy on Muslims who are assessed as being pre-crime. Aked and Medact’s aim is to call attention to the problems of Prevent’s entanglement with mental health. This involves changing government policy, asking mental health workers to resist, and calling on professional bodies to review the measures.

    Our recent investigation into Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) bears many similarities here. SIM also provides an avenue for police involvement in mental health care. Evidently, such pressure is much needed.

    Aked explains:

    We think these hubs should be shut down. There’s wider problems of racism and coercion in mental healthcare already. Shutting these hubs is not going to solve those problems overnight, but these hubs really encapsulate some of the worst dynamics of both racism in mental healthcare and the racism and securitisation of Prevent policy.

    Community response

    A number of Muslim organisations have expressed their concern at the existence of these hubs.

    Deputy chair of MEND Shazad Amin said:

    ‘Monitoring’ of patients referred for ‘Islamic ideology’ risks pathologising normative Muslim practices.

    The disproportionate rates of Muslim children being referred is also concerning – we need clarity on the reasons for this to ensure that judgements based on Islamophobia are not being made.

    CAGE spokesperson Anas Mustapha told The Canary:

    Medact’s report continues to evidence what has been a worrying trajectory of securitising public health through the instrumentalising of PREVENT. We support Medact’s recommendation on the immediate scrapping of the Vulnerability Support Hubs and go further to demand the complete severing of the toxic PREVENT agenda from public health.

    We’ve documented how PREVENT will irreparably damage doctor-patient confidentiality, and undermine the trust under which all public sector interactions rely upon.

    Making public sector workers the handmaidens of the state, not only erodes that trust but has made no tangible improvement to national security.

    Blurring the boundaries of mental health care to allow police to monitor patients is an egregious abuse of police powers. It severely hampers the standard of treatment available to patients, places Muslims under suspicion, and puts more pressure on an already inadequate mental health service.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Lianhao Qu

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • McDade and Jackson’s tragically intertwined lives tell the story of a society that feeds on and maintains oppression through punishment, violence, and isolation. They also show us a way out.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Britain’s youngest MP has been told to take “several weeks” away from work by her doctor, as she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

    Labour MP for Nottingham East Nadia Whittome has announced she will take a leave of absence from the Commons, after months of trying to manage her condition alongside full-time work.

    But she said: “Unfortunately, it has become clear that this is not feasible and I have been advised by my doctor that I need to take several weeks off in order for my health to improve.”

    Whittome was elected in the December 2019 election aged just 23, and became the Baby of the House.

    In a statement explaining why she had disclosed the nature of her illness, she said: “I feel it is important for me to be honest that it is mental ill-health I am suffering from – specifically post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

    “One in four people will experience mental health problems each year, but there is still a great deal of shame and stigma surrounding it.

    “Through being open about my own mental health struggle, I hope that others will also feel able to talk about theirs, and that I can play a small role in creating greater acceptance and facilitating healthier discussions around this issue.”

    She thanked Labour leader Kier Starmer and his political secretary Jenny Chapman for their “kindness” and added that her staff would continue to support constituents.

    The chief executive of a leading mental health charity praised Whittome’s transparency.

    Mark Winstanley, from Rethink Mental Illness, said: “The enduring stigma surrounding mental health in the workplace can be hugely damaging, preventing people from accessing support and leading them to prioritise work over their own wellbeing for fear of judgment.

    “Being signed off from work for poor mental health is not a sign of weakness, but a recognition that wellbeing should always be a priority.

    “We welcome Nadia’s openness around her diagnosis and wish her well in her recovery.”

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Trigger warning: this article contains discussion of suicidality, self-harm, and mental distress

    Police officers are being used alongside community mental health teams in NHS services. Former police sergeant Paul Jennings founded a company called the High Intensity Network (HIN) which runs Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM). Under the SIM programme, police are used to intervene with highly distressed patients. This is to decrease patients’ use of emergency numbers, accident and emergency departments, or any healthcare in general.

    There’s growing concern from a number of groups as to both SIM’s effectiveness and patient vulnerability. As of May 2021, according to the Stop SIM Coalition, 23 out of 52 NHS Trusts in England use SIM.

    As part of our #OurLivesOurStories series, we’ll continue to look at the shortcomings of mental health services, as well as increasing NHS privatisation.

    What is SIM?

    SIM was established in 2013, and after a 15 month pilot began to be rolled out in 2016. Since 2018, SIM has run in a number of locations across the UK. Notably, HIN oversaw one such SIM roll-out in South London.

    This organisation explains what SIM is by stating:

    Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) is an innovative mental health workforce transformation model that brings together the police and community mental health services, in order to better support “high intensity users” of Section 136 of the Mental Health Act (MHA) and public services.

    Section 136 enables the police to move people to a ‘place of safety’. That’s if they present as having some kind of mental distress in public spaces. So-called ‘high intensity service users’ are people who are very unwell. They’re often at high risk of suicide or self-harm and tend to contact emergency services at a ‘high intensity.’

    What do the police have to do with it?

    A report from the 2018 SIM trial in South London explains the use of police in the programme:

    Key to the SIM model are the following staffing requirements:

    • A police officer to be appointed as a SIM police officer.
    • The SIM police officer to hold an NHS honorary contract and to be based within an NHS mental health team Monday – Friday 09.00 – 17.30.
    • The SIM police officer to have a named NHS line manager and police line manager.
    • The SIM police officer to complete the three-day intensive SIM training with NHS colleagues.
    • The SIM police officer and NHS mental health care coordinator (clinician) provide mentoring to the SIMservice user which is always provided together and never by the SIM police officer alone.
    • The clinician remains responsible for clinical risk assessment.
    • Twenty per cent of the SIM police officers time is spent liaising with other officers.
    • Caseloads are small.

    HIN trains police officers for 3 days. Once this training is complete, these police officers then hold an “NHS honorary contract”.

    In this same report, Paul Jennings lays out the rationale behind SIM:

    When the right support is not provided, the individual will fail to develop the skills to re-build their lives. They often spiral out of control, increasingly reliant on extreme behaviours to stay noticed or maintain human contact. By this time, even mental health teams run out of ideas and the risk of discharge from the NHS increases significantly. The behaviours encountered by emergency services and the public then become anti-social at best and criminal at worst.

    At this point, we have a choice. Give up on them or keep going.

    Here, Jennings links expressions of distress or “extreme behaviours” as behaviour which is criminal. This seems to be at the core of why a number of organisations have criticised Jennings and SIM.

    Objections pour in

    The Stop SIM coalition has objected strongly to the use of SIM:

    Individuals are not placed under SIM because they have committed a crime. They are extremely vulnerable and frequently at high risk of self-harm and suicide. Despite these high levels of risk, patients under SIM have crisis ‘response plans’ which prevent them from accessing potentially life-saving treatment 

    Dr Adrian James, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, told The Canary:

    There’s been growing debate about the use in a number of places across England of ‘Serenity Integrated Monitoring’ with people who have complex mental health needs and have required frequent support from emergency services. Many people in this situation have been let down by a number of different services, including mental health, and they deserve effective and compassionate support.

    Andy Bell, deputy chief executive of the Centre for Mental Health, told The Canary:

    Concerns have been raised about whether the SIM approach is safe, effective or appropriate. These concerns need to be taken seriously. Any new approach or intervention to support people’s mental health needs to be tested robustly and independently, before it is spread widely. It needs to be evaluated for its safety, effectiveness and acceptability, including with evidence drawn from personal experience. This is especially the case for any approach involving elements of coercion, which can have lasting negative effects.

    We are also deeply concerned about the way such approaches could further heighten the stigma around people with complex needs, or re-traumatise them, instead of giving people the compassionate support they need and deserve.

    The mental health charity Mind released the following statement on SIM:

    Profit before patients

    Another prominent concern is the involvement of HIN, as a private company, with NHS services.

    The 2018 report from South London includes a number of metrics that measure SIM’s relative success. Two particular points stand out:

    • For the 103 service users that had been allocated to SIM, the average number of contacts per month, per service user decreased for: A&E attendances, ambulance resources despatched, mental health bed days, police deployments and S136s, with an increase in ambulance calls received and police calls.
    • Comparing the baseline period to the allocated period, there was an average decrease in cost by 6 per cent (£159 per month per service user). Based on the total 1,347 months of time on the SIM programme across the London cohort, this translates to a saving of £214,173 over the two years.

    Indeed, the Academic Health Science Networks, which assisted with SIM during 2018-2020, states on its site that:

    The AHSN Network helps mobilise the value that the NHS can add as an economic asset within the UK economy. Through the Innovation Pathway we broker access to a range of expert support and services across the health and care sectors that support NHS innovators and companies to realise the commercial and economic potential of their ideas.

    Worryingly, the HIN network lists 3 locations in the USA as using the SIM programme.

    Cat Hobbs, director of We Own It, told The Canary:

    This is yet another private sector ‘innovation’ that appears to be anything but innovative or effective. It fails to put the needs of patients first and undermines their access to healthcare.

    Mental health services – just like all health and social care – should be built around the needs of patients and the expertise of clinicians and health workers. The best way to ensure that is to end the obsession with outsourcing and privatisation that has infected our public services, and to reinstate our NHS as a fully public service.

    Patient safety

    The Canary reached out to HIN director Paul Jennings and he told us:

    SIM is a highly supportive, empowering and life changing model of care that continues to advance our understanding of this complex crisis care problem, for patients who were existing in a largely unsupported space between mental healthcare and the criminal justice system. We have made significant progress in understanding these intensively distressed and traumatised patients, who frequently use services that are ill-prepared to help effectively. Their continued distress often places members of the public at significant risk and so they frequently commit criminal and anti-social offences during their crises.

    The involvement of the police, however, is troubling for those who work in mental health services.

    Sage Stephanou, founder of the Radical Therapist Network (RTN), told The Canary:

    RTN vehemently oppose SIM which seeks to impose carceral punishment and surveillance as a means to deter some of the most vulnerable people within our community, named by SIM as “high-intensity users”, from seeking life saving mental and physical health support. This scheme will likely have violent consequences which will disproportionately impact Black, asian and minority ethnic communities, through giving the police further power and patient information which could be used to punish Black and brown individuals, as well as further harm people who exist at the intersection of race, disability and class; specifically immigrants, people living in poverty, sex workers, survivors of abuse and GRC community.

    Stephanou raised the issue that the use of Section 136 has itself been deeply problematic for Communities of Colour:

    Asian patients are twice as likely, and Black patients four times as likely to be detained under the MHA, plus more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis compared to white patients, however the underlying systemic causes are left unnamed and untreated. SIM feeds the racist, violent stereotypes of conflating “dangerous”, or “high-risk” behaviour with mental illness is a tool of colonialism used to dominate and oppress Black people, rather than offer holistic support.

    They made clear the dangers of police involvement in mental health care:

    SIM perpetuates the prison industrial complex by monitoring and gatekeeping healthcare support and ultimately criminalises people who experience significant mental illness and trauma, often exasperated by systematic racism, oppression and adverse experiences. Inequalities in housing, education, employment and access to healthcare compound trauma, perpetuating the cycle of violence of racially and socially minoritized groups.

    Stephanou went on to add:

    SIM will exasperate the very real and legitimate fear that if racialised individuals access mental health support, or report abuse, they are at risk of systemic violence under the guise of care. Police involvement often escalates risk, creating dangerous situations through the use of physical restraint, coercive, unethical forms of treatment, detainment, and higher chances of Black and brown people dying whilst in police custody.

    The involvement of police officers with mental health care, and particularly the care of extremely vulnerable patients, is deeply worrying.

    The range of issues with SIM is disturbing. Increased NHS privatisation, cruel treatments for vulnerable patients, a lack of community-focused healthcare, and police involvement are just some of these issues. The NHS must listen to the wide variety of groups and individuals who are expressing extreme concern at the SIM programme. Police involvement does not mean safety; it does often mean harm. We need less police involved in mental health services, not more.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Ashley Harkness

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The graffiti says it all: “This is a bad place.” Why do states send children to facilities run by Sequel, after dozens of cases of abuse?

    The vacant building that once housed the Riverside Academy in Wichita, Kansas, was covered in haunting graffiti: “Burn this place.” “Youth were abused here … systematically.” “This is a bad place.” The facility, run by the for-profit company Sequel Youth & Family Services, promised to help kids with behavioral problems. But state officials had cited the facility dozens of times for problems including excessive force by staff, poor supervision and neglect.  

    Riverside was just one residential treatment center run by Sequel. In a yearlong investigation, APM Reports found the company profited by taking in some of the most difficult-to-treat children and providing them with care from low-paid, low-skilled employees. The result has been dozens of cases of physical violence, sexual assault and improper restraints. Despite repeated scandals, many states and counties continue to send kids to Sequel for one central reason: They have little choice.

    For much of its 20 year history, Sequel was able to avoid public scrutiny. But that changed recently in Oregon, when State Senator Sara Gesler began to investigate the conditions of kids the state placed under the company’s care. What she found led to Oregon demanding change and eventually severing ties with Sequel. 

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired on 11/21/20.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Government accused of violating right to life after mentally ill mother took overdose when benefits cut off

    The family of Philippa Day, a mentally ill single mother who died from a deliberate overdose after her benefits were wrongly cut off, is to seek compensation from the government.

    Day died in 2019 after months of struggle with the benefit system left her in debt, highly anxious and haunted by suicidal thoughts. An inquest concluded her experience with the system was a “stressor” in her decision to take the overdose.

    In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Students wait in a socially distanced line to enter Pasadena High School on April 20, 2021, during their first day of in-person learning since the pandemic closed schools over a year ago.

    Carla Rivera, a 12th grader at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, New York, is relieved to be back in school. “Being home was stressful,” she says. “I was watching my 10-year-old brother and trying to keep him on track with his school work. Then, when my mom got home from work at 4:00, I’d begin my assignments but they piled on top of each other and I felt like it was impossible to stay caught up.” Thankfully, Rivera says, she is now on target to graduate in June and plans to study zoological science in college beginning this fall.

    Like Rivera, Noah Fishman, a senior at New Paltz High School in upstate New York, was eager to return to in-person classes when it became possible to do so. “I wanted to feel normal,” he told Truthout. “Even when in-person school is boring, it’s better than boring online school.”

    Both Rivera and Fishman describe schooling during the pandemic as “chaotic” and report that uncertainty and angst have become their everyday companions. “There’s been more drinking and drug use,” Fishman says, “and everyone is really stressed. It’s become second nature, as if being anxious all the time is the way it’s supposed to be. I wish our teachers would tell us at least once a day that everything will be OK, that they’re here for us and want us to do well overall. It’s important that they remind us of this and create an environment that is supportive and caring.”

    Experts agree and say that attention to students’ mental health will be increasingly important as more and more schools reopen.

    Indeed, the pandemic has caused mental health to take a dramatic nosedive for just about everyone. Since the lockdown began, suicide has become the second leading cause of death for adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17, with tweens and teens reporting trouble sleeping, focusing and feeling connected to family and friends. Experts stress that these symptoms are unlikely to go away by themselves — something that schools will have to face head-on.

    As of February, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told schools that they could reopen as long as students and staff wore masks, maintained at least three feet of social distancing, and kept facilities clean, approximately 46 percent of the nation’s 98,158 public schools have gone back to five days a week of in-person instruction. Since then, slightly more than one-third of students — 34 percent — have returned and this percentage is expected to increase as more people get vaccinated and the virus recedes.

    But can schools return to the way things were before the pandemic, or will new models be needed to address the social and emotional needs of students, most of whom have been taking classes online — typically with cameras off to protect their privacy — for more than a year?

    Making Real Space for Mental Health

    “We know that the way children learn and develop has a lot to do with the environment that exists around them,” Justina Schlund, senior director of content and field learning at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, a 27-year-old organization devoted to increasing the emotional intelligence of children, adolescents, teens and adults. “It is not just content, but how students engage with the academic material.”

    What’s more, she says, learning requires students to be able to concentrate, a task that is extremely difficult when they are traumatized by illness; abuse; food, housing or job insecurity; or grief over the death of family members or friends. Many are also simply grieving the loss of life before COVID.

    The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) estimates that prior to the pandemic, about 20 percent of U.S. kids experienced some emotional difficulties before completing high school. “We now expect these rates to double or triple after COVID,” their website warns. “Strategies to ensure that students feel physically and emotionally safe at school” are imperative, NASP concludes.

    Recognition of this has pushed the federal government to allocate resources to help those most at risk, including $800 million to support homeless students and provide wraparound academic and counseling services to enable them to remain enrolled. Other still-pending legislation includes H.R. 614, The Put School Counselors Where They’re Needed Act, which will fund supports to increase high school graduation rates. Also pending is the Transfer, Heal and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy (THRIVE) Act, which will provide funding for more than 2 million jobs in education and the care economy.

    But funding is just one piece of what is needed.

    Jessica Trubek, a social worker at Lyons Community School in Brooklyn, New York, works with students in grades six through 12, and while she supports increased funding for additional social workers and guidance counselors, she says that schedules must shift to prioritize mental health concerns.

    “Where does mental health fit into the school day?” Trubek asks. Right now, she says, she has to fit counseling sessions into a student’s remote or actual study hall period, or see them during their lunch break or when they are supposed to be working independently. “We constantly hear how important mental health is,” she says, “but there is literally no space for us to counsel the students or teach them about mental health. Physical education is mandated, but educating students about mental health is not, even though it’s right up there with math, English and science in terms of importance.”

    Valuing Mental Wellbeing

    Lesley Koplow, director of the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice at the Bank Street College of Education, agrees with Trubek. “Some schools see a dichotomy between instructional and noninstructional time. So-called noninstructional time — where we talk about feelings, experiences and different ways of responding to a particular situation — gives kids feelings of self-worth, of being valued and cared for. Foundationally, it allows kids to be unburdened, so they’re able to take in new learning. Schools undermine students’ capacity to understand new material if they undervalue noninstructional time,” she told Truthout.

    Using the arts, as well as English, history and social studies classes to give students a chance to process information and try to make sense of the world can be extremely helpful, she says. “If students had something happen that was frightening or traumatic, that experience will take up the front of their minds and they’ll tune out in class. Teachers can be developmental partners to make sure that kids feel like they’re in good company. In younger kids, teachers can use play, drawing, reading and writing to bring together academic, social and emotional life and invite self-expression.”

    But time for support and noninstructional development may not be readily available. What of those students who are expected to take, and pass, standardized tests within weeks of returning to school?

    David Marshall, a social studies teacher and varsity track coach at Chicago’s Carl Schurz High School, told Truthout, “my Advanced Placement class had to jump right back into academics the second we began meeting in person because we have just six weeks to prepare for the AP exam. Remote learning was slower than in-person learning so we need to press through in order to be ready. The AP tests are run by the College Board and they have already been pushed to later in the school year than is normal, so we had to make the transition back immediately.”

    Marshall’s non-AP classes were able to take more time to process what they’d been through. He says some students opened up about depression and anxiety while others wanted to dive right back into schoolwork. “It’s been difficult,” he says. “As a teacher I want to be understanding but I need to strike a balance with every kid to meet their academic and emotional needs.”

    Not surprisingly, Marshall reports that he is exhausted. He’s not the only one: Bank Street College’s Lesley Koplow says that burnout is pervasive.

    “Teaching is the most intense, demanding and amazing job, but to do it well, a teacher has to be smart, present and fully attuned to what they are feeling,” Koplow told Truthout. “Your whole childhood comes back and teachers need time and space to connect with each other. If they don’t, they tend to get sick or burn out and there is then turnover every five minutes.”

    Importance of Training Adults

    Indeed, the pandemic has reminded us that adult mental health is a key component of successful education. This is why the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI) focuses on training school personnel — the largely unheralded teachers, paraprofessionals and administrators who work in pre-K through 12th grade classrooms throughout the country — to be more attentive to the impact of emotions on classroom dynamics. This training helps adults understand how emotions and trauma impact students’ ability to learn. It also emphasizes that adults need care, too.

    “The changes of the last year did not leave a lot of time for us, as adults, to engage in self-care or even take the time to think about and manage what we’re feeling,” Nicole Elbertson, YCEI’s director of content and communications, told Truthout. “When we are stressed, upset or scared, where does this leave us when they have to deal with our children and students and their needs? We have a phrase we use, ‘Name it to tame it.’ It’s the idea that it’s only when we’re aware of what we’re feeling that we’re able to manage those feelings. If we’re feeling overwhelming fear or anxiety, what are we doing to handle it?”

    In essence, she adds, adults must address their own issues even as they’re helping students address theirs.

    This isn’t a new idea, Elbertson says, but it’s now more widely accepted than it used to be. Reams of research, she continues, confirms that if a student is grappling with things like abuse, death, homelessness, homophobia, hunger, police violence, racism or sexism, academics will likely end up on a back burner.

    That said, she is encouraged that YCEI trainings have been in high demand since the start of the pandemic. “Even before COVID, schools had begun to recognize that emotions impact everything that happens in a classroom and that if we help students handle their emotions, they’ll be in a better place to learn and achieve,” she says. “COVID, as hard as it has been, taught us that we can leverage our emotions and develop a more flexible approach to teaching and learning.”

    The stakes could not be higher.

    Psychologists have called untreated trauma the underbelly of violence. We also know that not every kid bounces back from negative experiences. As we learned after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, once schools reopened and structure and routine returned, “many children were resilient, regaining their previous level of psychological functioning. However, a significant minority of children who were more vulnerable had difficulty.”

    Educators expect this to be true of students returning to school in the aftermath of COVID-19. And since we know that neither students nor teachers can leave their emotions outside the schoolhouse door, their ability to process their experiences will have everything to do with how well they function in the years to come.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A beautiful tree with many branches at the centre of a leafy glen in the forest. Photo by veeterzy on Unsplash

    This is a guest blog by Emilia P. Anaya, a mental health and environmental justice advocate, for Mental Health Week.

    During the pandemic, we have seen a surge in demand for services and rising rates of people struggling with their mental health. But we’ve also seen more and more people talk about their growing appreciation for nature, and looking to spend time outdoors to find a sense of calm. Mental health advocates have been saying that the mental health system is underfunded, and the gaps in access need to be addressed. Mental health care, however, must also include promoting and preserving wellbeing, and that includes fighting for environmental and climate justice.

    A growing body of research on the impacts of climate change on mental health shows that the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and natural disasters directly threaten mental health and make mental health conditions worse. Mental health suffers because of the displacement and loss of community, the increased risk of physical injuries, and the destruction of the natural and social environments on which we depend for work, food, wellbeing, and culture. For example, members of an Inuit community in Labrador reported that changes in snow and ice, wildlife, and vegetation patterns significantly impacted their cultural identity and mental well-being. Similarly, toxic pollution and the adverse health effects linked to a lack of access to clean water, exposure to toxic chemicals, and the destruction of natural spaces contribute to negative mental health outcomes.

    Researchers warn that as climate change worsens, so will its impacts on mental health. Climate change is similarly expected to disproportionately impact low-income and racialized communities, in addition to people with pre-existing mental illnesses or conditions and people who live in the regions most vulnerable to the changes in climate.

    But nature should offer solace: research shows that access to a healthy natural environment is protective of mental health. Studies have found that there is a strong connection between spending time in nature and reduced stress, depression, and anxiety. Having safe access to green spaces, clean water, and clear air is essential for our physical and mental wellbeing. Protecting mental health therefore also means respecting Indigenous land sovereignty and making natural spaces safe from police harassment for racialized people.

    A crowd of young people at the 2019 Climate Strike in Montreal, Quebec. Photo by Pascal Bernardon on Unsplash

    The mental health and environmental crises we are facing are urgent and interconnected, and solutions must address them in a coordinated way. At the root of both is a system that drives the destruction of nature for profit and that employs violence to prioritize property over people.

    Together, the mental health and environmental justice movements can fight for healthier communities by expanding natural spaces, stopping fossil fuel expansion, and investing in communities instead of polluters. In doing so, we can also build each others’ strength, optimism, and hope. This Mental Health Week, and for the rest of the year, let’s take care of ourselves and each other, and stand up together for the just and green future that we deserve.

    The post Stopping Climate Change for Mental Health appeared first on Environmental Defence.

    This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.

  • A new report paints a picture of an already strained system struggling to meet the mental health needs of millions.

    Therapists and other behavioral health care providers cut hours, reduced staffs and turned away patients during the pandemic as more Americans experienced depression symptoms and drug overdoses, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

    The report on patient access to behavioral health care during the covid-19 crisis also casts doubt on whether insurers are abiding by federal law requiring parity in insurance coverage, which forbids health plans from passing along more of the bill for mental health care to patients than they would for medical or surgical care.

    The GAO’s findings are “the tip of the iceberg” in how Americans with mental, emotional and substance use disorders are treated differently than those with physical conditions, said JoAnn Volk, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms who studies mental health coverage.

    The GAO report, shared before publication exclusively with KHN, paints a picture of an already strained behavioral health system struggling after the pandemic struck to meet the treatment needs of millions of Americans with conditions like alcohol use disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

    Up to 4 in 10 adults on average reported anxiety or depression symptoms during the pandemic, the report showed, compared with about 1 in 10 adults in early 2019.

    During the first seven months of the pandemic, there were 36% more emergency room visits for drug overdoses, and 26% more visits for suicide attempts, compared with the same period in 2019.

    As the need grew, already spotty access to treatment dwindled, the GAO found: A survey of members of the National Council for Behavioral Health, an organization that represents treatment providers, showed 27% reported they laid off employees during the pandemic; 35% reduced hours; and 45% said they closed programs.

    Worker shortages have long been an obstacle to accessing behavioral health services, which experts attribute in large part to problems with how providers are paid. Last fall the federal government estimated that more than one-third of Americans live in an area without enough providers available.

    Provider groups interviewed by GAO investigators acknowledged staff shortages and some delays in getting patients into treatment. They noted that the pandemic forced them to cut outpatient services and limit inpatient options. They also told the researchers that payment issues are a significant problem that predated the pandemic. In particular, the GAO said, most groups cited problems getting reimbursed by Medicaid more often than any other payer.

    Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, requested the report from GAO after hearing complaints that constituents’ insurance claims for behavioral health care were being denied.

    In an interview, Wyden said he plans to embark on a “long-running project” as chairman to make care “easier to find, more affordable, with fewer people falling between the cracks.”

    Spurred by how the pandemic has intensified the system’s existing problems, Wyden identified four “essential” targets for lawmakers: denied claims and other billing issues; the workforce shortage; racial inequality; and the effectiveness of existing federal law requiring coverage parity.

    For Wyden, the issue is personal: The senator’s late brother had schizophrenia. “Part of this is making sure that vulnerable Americans know that somebody is on their side,” he said.

    State and federal officials rely heavily on people’s complaints about delayed or denied insurance claims to alert them to potential violations of federal law. The report cited state officials who said they “routinely” uncover violations, yet they lack the data to understand how widespread the problems may be.

    Congress passed legislation in December that requires that health plans provide government officials with internal analyses of their coverage for mental and physical health services upon request.

    Part of the problem is that people often do not complain when their insurer refuses to pay for treatment, said Volk, who has been working with state officials on the issue. She advised that anyone who is denied a claim for behavioral care should appeal it to their insurer and report it to their state’s insurance or labor department.

    Another obstacle: Shame and fear are often associated with being treated for a mental health disorder, as well as a belief among some patients that inequitable treatment is just the way the system works. “Something goes wrong, and they just expect that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Volk said.

    The GAO report noted other ways the pandemic limited access to care, including how public health guidelines encouraging physical distancing had forced some treatment facilities to cut the number of beds available.

    On a positive note, the GAO also reported widespread approval for telehealth among stakeholders like state officials, providers and insurers, who told government investigators that the increased payments and use of virtual appointments had made it easier for patients to access care.

    KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 12 Mins Read By: Isobel Whitcomb Andrew Bryant, a therapist based in Tacoma, Washington, felt helpless the first time climate change came up in his office. It was 2016, and a client was agonizing over whether to have a baby. His partner wanted one, but the young man couldn’t stop envisioning this hypothetical child growing up in an […]

    The post Stressed About The Climate Crisis? How Therapists Are Treating Eco-Anxiety appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Mental health professionals are developing a new standard of mental health care for our climate-changed world.

    Andrew Bryant, a therapist based in Tacoma, Washington, felt helpless the first time climate change came up in his office. It was 2016, and a client was agonizing over whether to have a baby. His partner wanted one, but the young man couldn’t stop envisioning this hypothetical child growing up in an apocalyptic, climate-changed world.

    Bryant was used to guiding people through their relationship conflicts, anxieties about the future, and life-changing decisions. But this felt different — personal. Bryant had long felt concerned about climate change, but in a distant, theoretical way. The patient’s despair faced him with an entirely new reality: that climate change would directly impact his life and the lives of future generations.

    “I had never considered the possibility,” Bryant said. In that moment, his fear was a dense fog. All he could think about in response to his client’s anxiety was his own young children: What world would they inherit? Should he feel guilty for bringing them into it?

    “I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to say,” Bryant said. He did know that nothing in his years of training and experience had equipped him to deal with climate change. Bryant has since spent years studying the mental health effects of climate change. Today, he is well equipped for these situations. But that first experience marked the beginning of a reckoning — one he sees happening in the field at large.

    The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recognizes climate change as a growing threat to mental health, but many mental health professionals feel unequipped to handle the growing number of people anxious and grieving over the state of the planet.

    Therapists in a few subspecialties, such as eco-therapy, train specifically to integrate environmental awareness into their work with clients. But these therapists make up a small percentage of the field, and the vast majority of people don’t have access to climate-informed therapy. A 2016 study found that more than half of therapists interviewed felt that their training had not adequately prepared them to deal with the mental health impacts of the climate crisis. Moreover, the same study found that although most respondents recognized the importance of climate change in the mental health profession at large, nearly half saw climate change as irrelevant to their own work specifically.

    The reality is that climate change is impacting everyone in the therapist’s office; it’s the background — and increasingly the foreground — of life on Earth. But for a therapist who is themself barely coming to terms with climate change, offering non-judgmental counsel to a patient can be particularly challenging.

    “I think a lot of therapists do recognize that these issues have clinical relevance,” said Susan Clayton, a psychologist at the University of Wooster who researches climate anxiety, “but at this point, hardly anybody has received any training specifically in addressing this.”

    With climate-related anxiety, stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder on the rise, a contingent of mental health professionals are developing a new standard of mental healthcare for our climate-changed world. Their profession faces a steep learning curve.

    There’s growing recognition in the field of psychology that people are experiencing distress over climate change. More than 40% of Americans felt “disgusted” or “helpless” about climate change, according to a survey published by researchers at Yale University. A 2020 poll from the APA found that more than half of respondents were somewhat or extremely anxious about the effects of climate change on their own mental health. Though not officially classified in the DSM-5, the tome therapists use to classify and treat mental illnesses, there’s a name for this state of despair that has emerged from academic texts and media since as recently as 2007: eco-anxiety.

    It’s only natural to feel anxious in the face of a melting planet and the sixth mass extinction, both wrought by human actions. But while humanity may be responsible for the carbon pollution warming our planet, the reality is that just a few large corporations — and complicit politicians — have set us on this path. As individuals, it’s easy to feel helpless to stop the destruction of the biosphere.

    That was my experience. I grew up in a region of Oregon heavily impacted by drought and wildfire. Over the past 10 years, my grief has steadily intensified as lack of snow closed the mountain where I learned to ski, as smoke blanketed my hometown each summer. Though I was in therapy for five years, I didn’t speak about my yearly dread of triple-digit temperatures, or my obsession over local snowpack reports. I assumed that therapy couldn’t ease my sadness, because I was there to deal with internal problems. In contrast, climate change seemed like the ultimate external problem. If I had no control over climate change, how could I begin to tackle my own despair?

    Climate anxiety is awkward in this way. In some ways, it’s a rational response, said Leslie Davenport, a therapist based in Tacoma, Washington, and the author of the book Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change: A Clinician’s Guide. “Eco-anxiety is a natural response to a threat. And this is a very real threat,” Davenport said. Yet it can also debilitate. In college, I began a campaign to shut down fracking in Los Angeles County. Within months, I burned out. Constantly contemplating the impact of fracking on our atmosphere and communities was making it difficult for me to function at a basic level.

    Because of this tension between eco-anxiety’s role as a rational but potentially debilitating response, there’s no clear, standard definition as to when eco-anxiety is unhealthy, if it ever is. “That’s one of the questions we really need to be asking,” Clayton said. “Anxiety is not pleasant to experience, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s an emotional signal that we need to be paying attention.”

    But a lack of clear guidelines around eco-anxiety and climate change means that many therapists pathologize their clients’ anxiety, or treat it as an unhealthy response. Others simply feel uncertain about how to treat it. In response to a 2016 survey, nearly one in five therapists described their clients’ responses as inappropriate. Several participants said that their clients’ beliefs about climate change were “delusional” or “exaggerated.” Another quarter gave mixed responses.

    One mental health professional told me about an experience with her own therapist, when she divulged her anguish over the increasing severity of drought. In response, her therapist asked “OK, but what is this really about?” The otherwise highly competent, trusted therapist couldn’t comprehend that climate change was the sole cause of her distress.

    While eco-anxiety is a natural response, it can also become unhealthy when it becomes paralyzing, Clayton said. But that doesn’t make it exaggerated or misplaced. When a therapist dismisses a client’s distress as so, it can be profoundly damaging, Davenport said. “The client becomes the problem and the source of dysfunction,” Davenport said of this scenario. “Anytime a person is wrongfully blamed it can be painful, but coming from a mental health professional, an expert where a power differential is also in play, it can be disorienting for the client, causing them to question their own reality.” This dynamic harms the foundation of trust between client and therapist, and can drive the anxious client into further isolation, Davenport said.

    Caroline Hickman, a psychotherapist and climate psychologist at the University of Bath, has spent years leading training sessions and presenting lectures on climate change. But lately, the field’s inadequacy in the face of a mounting problem has struck her as particularly stark. Increasingly, people have reached out to her after confusing or disappointing experiences trying to articulate their climate anxiety to trusted therapists. “Suddenly there’s this disconnect. And suddenly you realize you’re living in different worlds,” Hickman said.

    When a therapist dismisses a client’s eco-anxiety or grief, the response doesn’t necessarily come from a lack of empathy or concern for the climate crisis, Hickman said. Oftentimes, the reaction occurs because therapists themselves feel unable to cope with their own feelings about environmental destruction—much less those of the client. “Therapists are only human — but have a duty and responsibility, I believe, to face this stuff and reflect on their own vulnerability in order to help their clients,” Hickman added.

    For John Burton, a psychoanalyst based in New York City, there’s rarely a day when he doesn’t think about climate change. When a client brings up the topic — even in a passing comment about air travel or Greta Thunberg — he immediately feels a jolt of anxiety.

    “It stirs up such feelings of helplessness,” he said. “That’s what comes up for me. It shouldn’t.”

    When a therapist hasn’t begun to come to terms with their own emotions around climate change, it can add to the emotional turmoil of clients coping with overwhelming grief and anxiety, said Tree Staunton, a climate psychotherapist in Bath, England. For example, a therapist’s own grief, anxiety or guilt might come off as defensiveness or withdrawal.

    “In therapy, we need to stay with that person’s reality and that person’s response. And the worst thing we can do as a therapist is bring in our own defenses,” Staunton said. “We don’t want to really experience the distress or the anxiety, so we can’t hear the other person’s.”

    Climate change is the reality we all live in now. Between 2009 and 2020, the proportion of Americans who said they had personally experienced the effects of global warming increased from 32% to 42%, according to the aforementioned 2020 survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. And in some cases, these effects are directly impacting mental health. Researchers followed more than 1,700 children who lived through four major hurricanes: Ike, Charley, Katrina, and Andrew. Their results, published earlier this year, found that up to half of the children went on to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. For 10% of the children, these symptoms became chronic. In another study published in 2018, researchers gathered data on the mental health of nearly 2 million people between 2002 and 2012 and local climates during that time period. Their results show that over five years, 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) of warming was linked to a 2% increase in all reported mental health issues.

    While the world has a choice when it comes to limiting climate change, magically stopping all carbon pollution tomorrow would still leave decades of warming baked into the system. That means, presumably, the mental health impacts could worsen into the future. Society will have to adapt to many changes, including how we treat the attendant grief and anxiety of life on a less stable planet.

    Therapists differ in how they help clients cope with the mental effects of climate change when they become unmanageable. Mindfulness-based approaches can help people cope with the intense emotions associated with climate anxiety and grief. For example, Davenport might walk clients through a guided meditation, in which they imagine themselves in a peaceful setting or have them tune into the specific sensations their body experiences as they think about climate change. Cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on addressing unhealthy ways of thinking, can help clients paralyzed by distressing thoughts about climate change. Climate-informed therapists also encourage activism and time in nature as a way to cope with the helplessness often associated with eco-anxiety and grief.

    These tools aren’t just for clients; they’re for therapists as well, who need to bear witness to the distress people are already experiencing over climate change. “Therapists need to be able to sit with that feeling, whatever that feeling is with their client,” Staunton said.

    Davenport, Staunton, and Hickman all lead training sessions where other therapists can learn to develop a climate-aware practice. At a recent training, Hickman spent the first 40 minutes of a training session helping students “recreate their connection” with the environment. Each went around and talked about their personal relationship to the planet, before learning about the relationship between climate change, grief, and loss.

    The goal of these sessions isn’t to become a specialist in climate change. The goal isn’t even to develop a discrete set of skills to use when a client expresses their anxiety about the environment, Hickman said. The goal is to help therapists view their entire practice through a new lens.

    “We look at every aspect of a person’s life through that therapeutic climate lens,” Hickman said. “People are existing and dealing with personal problems in the context of this global crisis now. And the global crisis will impact on the way you deal with personal problems.”

    For Hickman, that means looking at the environments clients inhabit, at the planet as other relationships in clients’ lives, just as therapists would examine clients’ relationships to their parents or significant others.

    “The reason we’re in this mess with the climate emergency is because we look at it as separate to ourselves,” Hickman said. She helps clients explore anxiety and grief about climate change by exploring their relationship to their local environment. For Hickman, her relationship to the planet is embodied by two trees in her childhood backyard, an oak and an ash, which she used to sit under when things were difficult in her home.

    By bringing this lens to the mental health profession, climate-informed therapists hope that it’ll encourage more people to speak out about their emotions around climate change. Although 27% of people say that they’re “very worried” about global warming, according to Yale’s 2020 survey, therapists say that emotionally significant conversations about climate change rarely come up in therapy, but that the topic does come up in passing comments — a finding supported by the 2016 survey on climate change and therapy. This might simply be because people aren’t paying attention to their emotions about climate change, or don’t think to bring the topic up, Burton said.

    “We feel like it’s something we can’t do anything about,” he said.

    Climate anxiety and grief are what Davenport called “disenfranchised” emotions. As a society, we don’t yet make space for it as a valid emotional response; not in the same ways that we would for, say, grief over the death of a family member. “It’s prevalent, but no one’s allowed to speak up,” she said.

    Under a climate-informed model of therapy, therapists encourage these people, who otherwise might remain silent, to bring their grief and anxiety into the open. They might help clients tease out passing comments about climate change, or even include climate change-related questions on intake forms.

    It sometimes takes a crisis to provoke change. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Council for Accreditation for Counseling and Related Standards, which accredits master’s and doctoral degree programs in counseling and its specialties, began requiring programs to include crisis, disaster, and trauma response as core counseling curricula.

    “Before 9/11, no one ever thought about the role of therapy for disasters, ever,” Burton said. He hopes that climate change will force a similar change sooner, rather than later.

    For Bryant, that first experience working with an eco-anxious client was a reckoning. Since then, Bryant has devoted years to learning about the psychology of climate change. He facilitates study groups on Zoom, posts detailed guidelines for leading a climate-change support group, and gathers articles on climate science and psychology. Today, others consider him a leader in the field of climate-change informed psychotherapy. He’s seen these changes mirrored in the field at large.

    “I’ve seen a huge shift in discourse,” Bryant said.

    In England, Staunton has been advocating for more systemic changes. Recently, her advocacy led to the addition of new training standards in the UK’s Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy College, one of 10 subsections of the UK Council for Psychotherapy. New therapists will be required to learn about the environmental and climate crises and the unconscious defenses we’re all employing when we think about this crisis. They’ll have to learn when to support those defenses in clients — and how to help clients overcome them.

    In the coming years, the number of people on the frontlines of climate change is going to grow. Widespread training promises more widespread access to necessary mental healthcare, Staunton said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.