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I’ve seen the effects of not getting help for mental illness first hand and it's no joke. It's very sad to see. One day a friend may be behaving normally and the next they can fall apart. What makes it worse is that sometimes you don’t even know what's going on or how to help.
health mental health mental illness spotlight StigmaMy foster home was not the best. It felt like they didn’t really care about me either. I had no clothes and had to wear their four-year-old daughters clothes.
abuse foster care foster care system foster kid spotlight traumaI also thought that the minimal anticipatory grief I had allowed myself to experience, when he was battling cancer, was sufficient. ‘I should be done. These tears are helping no one,’ I thought. But I simply wasn’t “done” and squelching my tears only allowed the depression to surface in more sinister ways. I couldn’t fall asleep, I would spend days eating only sweets, and, most damaging of all, I felt utterly alone.
death grief mental health psychology spotlight“The worry is that Prop 47 funds will be used for mental health treatment that is run by law enforcement,” says Lizzie Buchen, the statewide advocacy coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB). “Jails are not a place where people can heal. They can be very traumatic for people with mental health issues.”
mental health prop 47. law enforcement spotlightReforms like AB 12 work toward a better safety net and more stable situations for these youth, notes Brian Blalock, founder and director of Bay Area Legal Aid’s Youth Justice Project, “so they can make decision and make mistakes.” Youth make mistakes as a natural part of growing up, but for many youth in the system, Blalock says, a mistake is a luxury they can’t afford.
AB 12 foster care foster care youth reform spotlight
According to a new study by the San Francisco-based Young Minds Advocacy Project (YMAP), as many as 70 percent of the kids in California’s juvenile detention centers are in need of mental health care, and most of them are not getting it. Patrick Gardner, YMAP’s founder and one of the report’s authors, says many of these youth would not be in detention in the first place if there were more home and community-based mental health services available.
incarceration Juvenile Dentention juvenile hall mental health NAM new america media spotlight