Month: February 2018

Depression, Parkland and its affect on us all

Like many of you – okay, probably all of you – the events of at Majority Stoneman Douglas High School earlier this month took my breath away.  There’s simply no other way to say it.  Watching those children weep, their parents weep, their families in anguish – you have to be born without an empathetic bone in your body not to feel their pain and be willing to do almost anything to ease the suffering of those affected.

I’d argue I spent a good two days feeling depressed, having struggle concentrating, and with an enhanced sense of anxiety.  I have a six and a five year old, and every time I drop them off at school, that thought is always in the back of my head.

Please understand, of course, that I don’t want discuss Parkland from the perspective of “Oh, poor little me, so sad.”  I’m using the recent tragedy in Florida to discuss a much broader issue and how it affects people with mental health challenges to begin with.  Again, I come back to The Lost Connections, the book that I read a few weeks ago and reviewed in a recent blog entry.

One of the central points of the book was this: We live in a sick world, where we are bombarded with threats on a daily basis.  And, watching Parkland, I was reminded of the accuracy of this theory.  As noted by Dr. Graham Davey in this Huffington post article:

“Negative news can significantly change an individual’s mood — especially if there is a tendency in the news broadcasts to emphasize suffering and also the emotional components of the story. In particular… negative news can affect your own personal worries. Viewing negative news means that you’re likely to see your own personal worries as more threatening and severe, and when you do start worrying about them, you’re more likely to find your worry difficult to control and more distressing than it would normally be.”

The article goes on to note that negative news DOES make us more depressed, leads to more negativity towards the environment in general, and in extreme cases, can lead to PTSD-like symptoms.

Sort of related observation here: Don’t you feel better when you put your phone down and pull away from the world?  And, is that the answer?

No, it can’t be.  Painful as this planet can be sometimes, pulling away from it cannot be the way that we cope with it, at least in the long-term.  I refuse to believe that, because if that’s what happens, this world will collapse.  But, limiting our exposure has to be a necessary thing sometimes.  And that leads me to my next observation: Sometimes, it’s okay to put your phone down, put the TV down, and read a book.  Play video games.  Stare out the damn window.  Honestly, what you do is irrelevant – but what IS relevant is that you do take time for yourself and away from the world.

I’d also say this: The world gets scary when we feel powerless.  So, don’t view world events from that perspective.  If you truly feel powerless, reassert your power. Find an issue you care about, and attack it.  Make the world a better place by pledging to make a difference on a small problem.  In the case of the tragedy at Parkland, it can be something small, like writing your legislator and asking for gun control, or something large, like organizing a group dedicated to making a difference.

Whatever you do, reassert your power; as a state legislator, that’s been part of how I cope with the world today.  We are not lemmings on this world.  We aren’t sheep to be lead to the slaughter.  This is our world, dammit, and the best way to make it a better place is to shape it to be the place you want it to be.

OP-ED: Massacres, gun safety & mental health

The Morning Call, which is my local newspaper, recently published this op-ed that I wrote, following up on the Parkland massacre.  I’m publishing it here because it does touch on mental health, but specifically from the perspective of violence and publish policy.  First, remember, someone who is mentally ill is far more likely to be the victim of violence, rather than the perpetrator.  Second, I’m tired of hearing about, in the aftermath of these shootings, how we must repair our mental health system and then the only things that are done is funding cuts.

Anyway, read on for more.  I hope you find this useful

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Seventeen dead students and teachers.

Fifty-eight dead concert goers.

Forty-nine dead club attendees.

Twenty-seven dead students and teachers.

These are some of the worst gun massacres in the history of the United States. And they have all occurred within the past five years.

We have reached the point in our society where kindergarteners are being trained how to cower in the event that an armed gunman barges in on their class. Teachers are now being lauded for laying down their lives for their students. There is serious conversation about whether or not school staff, including administrators, teachers and janitors, should walk around school with guns locked and loaded.

We have hit this low point in our society. But we aren’t powerless. We aren’t lambs being led to the slaughter. We are the United States of America. The country that beat the Nazis can surely be the country that stops senseless bloodshed in sacred public places.

We need real gun safety, and we need it now.

•First: Reinstate the assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994-2004. It is harder for a 19-year-old to purchase Sudafed than an assault weapon. More to the point, the 1994 ban worked. According to one analysis, gun massacres and deaths from assault weapons tripled since the expiration of the assault weapons ban. Military-style weapons are responsible for almost every one of these crimes, and we can do something about it.

•Second, close the loophole that allows for individuals to purchase firearms without being subjected to a background check. If you want to buy a gun, you should always be subjected to a background check, and right now, you can legally purchase certain types of guns at certain types of sales without doing so. This massive loophole allows for terrorists or convicted felons to have access to firearms.

•Third, enact state Senate Bill 501, which would bar individuals who have a protection from abuse order from owning firearms and make it easier to take weapons away from those convicted of domestic assault. Many of the perpetrators of our worst massacres have been convicted of this heinous crime, and no one who beats an intimate partner should have access to a firearm.

It’s also vitally important that we discuss mental health. We frequently hear in this country that there is a need to improve our mental health system to prevent these types of massacres, despite the fact that someone with mentally illness is significantly more likely to be a victim of a crime than a perpetrator of one.

Indeed, opponents of gun safety often shake their heads, offer their “thoughts and prayers” and pledge to deal with our mental health system. That is followed immediately by … absolutely nothing, except attempts to repeal Obamacare and Medicaid expansion, both of which would fundamentally devastate our mental health system by cutting off funding, preventive care and hospital beds.

If you are opposed to gun safety measures, and want to improve our mental health care system, it’s not enough to say words that sound good. You have to stand for something.

Here are some suggestions. First, address the rising shortage of psychiatrists and psychologists by increasing reimbursement rates and Medicaid/Medicare slots for mental health care. Second, increase funding to critical and crisis care treatments, allowing for the creation of additional hospital beds to treat those experiencing a mental health crisis. Third, increase the reach of programs like the nurse family partnership and pre-K education, which have been proven to dramatically decrease mental illness.

Each and every one of us — from the most ill homeless person to the president of the United States — is never more than one moment away from a mental health crisis and running headlong into a system that doesn’t care about us. One in 5 American adults suffer from mental illness; 1 in 20 suffer from an illness so debilitating that they can no longer work. If you don’t care about the mentally ill, fine, but remember, this could be you or someone you love in a heartbeat.

There is no single solution to stopping gun violence, and individual and familial responsibility has an enormous role to play in ending this bloodshed. Background checks and banning the sale of military-style weapons won’t stop every massacre; after all, all of our laws and police activity don’t stop every crime. But our law enforcement — and the laws they enforce — do save countless lives and stop innumerable crimes every day.

We aren’t powerless. There are solutions. American ingenuity and know-how can save thousands of lives, and the only way to guarantee that the problem only gets worse is to do nothing.

All of us have an obligation to each other to make the world a better place, and we should be tired of living in a society which allows for over 13,000 gun deaths every year, including 17 dead children and adults on the floor of the freshman building of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla..

Mike Schlossberg of Allentown is state representative from the 132nd District.

The Lost Connections by Johann Hari

I mentioned this book in my entry the other day and I really wanted to discuss it more.  Hari is a journalist who openly discusses his own battles with depression and anxiety as a young man.  He, like many of us, was put on anti-depressants.  Like many of us, he found success with anti-depressants, only to find their effectiveness waning.  He goes on to discuss nine different types of depression and anxiety, ways to reconnect and the various social causes of psychological illness.  This book opened my eyes in a lot of ways.  Much of what was said rang completely true.  At the same time, I found myself incredibly angry at some of the arguments Hari makes.

Let me do the angry part first, because I think that made more of an impact, at least in my mind, because it’s more dangerous.

Hari basically argues that anti-depressants are effective only in the short-term, and only then for a placebo effect.  This argument is partially – but only partially – supported by science.  I will say that it really made me do some research and I was dismayed at what I found. The record of anti-depressants in terms of long-term effectiveness is not a positive one.  The link above is actually for a Google search, not a specific article, and I’d encourage you to do your own research.

What’s my problem, then?  Easy: Hari completely dismisses the biological causes of depression, issues that legitimately may require depression to address.  While much research needs to be done on the specific biological components of depression, it is clear that there is a biological component. To dismiss that – and to thus dismiss biologically based treatments – is problematic and pseudo-scientific.  I have real issues with that, and I think that Hari is being disingenuous at best – and dangerous at worst – with this type of advocacy.

But.

Hari makes other, very persuasive arguments – ones that ring true, in my mind.  The one that hit me the most was these: The social element of mental illness.  Hari goes through a series of arguments about how our society is making us sicker: We have lost our connections to each other as we are busier and get more absorbed in our various electronic devices.  We are bombarded by “junk values,” that encourage materialism over intrinsic values and real connection to people.  We live in a sick world – last week’s news from Parkland is a great example – that make us depressed.

This much really made sense to me, and if this advice was taken by all of us, could be transformative.  Society’s obligation to deal with the mentally ill has to do with much more than just treating biological and psychological causes of mental illness – we have to address the social ones as well.

Anyway, is the book worth the read? In my opinion, yeah.  I think you have to read it with an entire shaker of salt, and keep in mind that some of what Hari says isn’t supported by science.  But much of it is, and hopefully, you can read between the lines, find the things that work for you and go from there.

The struggle with blogging

Hello again!

I have kicked myself – repeatedly – for not blogging over the past couple of months.  As I’ve mulled it over, I’ve come to this conclusion: Blogging is hard if you aren’t quite sure what to say, or if you are afraid of running out of things to say.  I tried to get myself to blog twice a week but struggled with it, as there wasn’t always something good out there.  My readership numbers weren’t as high as I wish they were, so I sort of let this go by the wayside.

So, what changed my mind?

Well, a couple of things.  First, over a few days I had a few people say to me that they really appreciated what I wrote and that it helped them – or their family members – with their own struggles.  That really touched me.  I also finished reading a book – The Lost Connections by Johann Hari – that really fired me up and made me want to say a few things, both in a good and bad way.  And last is self-interest: I’m getting progressively closer to the release of my fiction book, Redemption.  So, all of those things combined set me off and hopefully kick-started my desire to write again.  I don’t know how often I’m going to do this, but I do know I want to do it more often than I am right now…which, okay, is never!  So yes, I’m on that!

I sincerely hope I can produce some interesting content for those of you who have been kind enough to read.  I can’t say it’s all going to be related to mental health/depression/anxiety, and to some extent, I think that was part of my problem – I limited myself too much.  That’s a broad topic, but it is not at all completely who I am.  I’m a mental health advocate, for sure, but there’s so much more out there, and I want to talk about more of that as well.

So, more later!  For now, I’m in the throws of campaigning (the full time job) and enjoying it greatly, but let me conclude by saying thank you.  I really appreciate all of you who have read the blog and gotten something out of it.

See you soon!
Mike