Mental Health + Systems

Who are the mirrors in your life-- the people or reminders that lovingly and gently but honestly reflect back the patterns, thoughts and behaviors that you maybe don't see or acknowledge in yourself?
The mirror I'm most grateful for today is my therapist. She holds my baggage with loving accountability, and makes it possible for me to tend to my own soul when life pulls my attention in a million directions.

 
I'm privileged, and it shouldn't be so, to have health insurance that covers most of the cost of therapy.
I'm privileged, and it shouldn't be so, that that I can drive myself to my sessions, and that I have job flexibility that makes it relatively easy to show up when I have time in my schedule.
I'm privileged, and it shouldn't be so, to have friends, mentors and caring people in my life who remind me that therapy and other resources for caring for myself are pertinent. 

 
I'm fairly new to working in the mental health field, and doing so has opened my eyes to the many, many barriers that people (particularly kids, teens and young adults in my context) face when accessing mental health care. It is not as simple as, "go see a therapist" or "go ask for help."

We need more therapists, social workers and mental health professionals, and we need to pay them better and challenge productivity standards set by for-profit entities.

We need more spiritual and faith leaders who are willing to refer people to therapy, and to learn the basics of mental health issues so we can create deeper and better networks of mental health care where formal organizations aren't available--in rural places, for example.

We need trained people (which usually doesn't include police officers) to support folks at the moment of crisis, and not presences that are going to judge or (re)traumatize an already-struggling or traumatized person.

We need more and better foster care parents (and support for non-foster care parents, for that matter) and agencies. We need DHS workers to be better supported.

We need to support direct action (and the organizers who lead it) that cracks open the systems that exacerbate and contribute to mental health issues: things like poverty and low wages, sexism, transphobia, heterosexism and misogyny, racism, and all the interlocking issues of oppression that people face.

The whole dang system, and each of its members, needs visibility, care and support. The tending of individual challenges must always be in conversation with structural change, and vice-versa.

I'm grateful for my own mental health journey, and I'm grateful for all the enriching but challenging I'm learning as the spiritual care director at a behavioral health organization. I'm constantly asking what it means to support the spiritual health of our people, and how to make our faith communities and families more able to offer inclusive, loving care to our young people.  How to offer spiritual and mental health care (and discerning both the relationship and sometimes necessary separation between the two) in times of crisis has captured my attention with increasing vigilance these days. So many among us are living with crisis all the time. So many are not only being denied their basic rights, but are being told dangerous stories about how they don't matter, or don't belong. 

Imagine if our communities-- both secular and faith-connected--could all be places where each of us can experience love and acceptance just as we are? I may be an idealist, but I think we can get there. I just hope we stay awake long enough to respond with intentionality.