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The Office of Hawaiian Affairs is backing a bill that would promote Hawaiian healing as an alternative treatment for mental health.

Recent studies published by OHA show one in four native Hawaiian teenage girls contemplate suicide, and the number of native Hawaiian boys that attempted suicide in high school was more than double that of non-Hawaiians.

OHA says it has seen the benefits traditional forms of healing can have on those in need.

“Native Hawaiian traditions and cultural practices incorporates not just the mind, not just the body, but the spirit, the ohana, the community that I know it’s really much more holistic,” said Kealoha Fox, Ka Pou Kako’o Nui, OHA.

Read more on KITV.com

For the February 2019 African American History Month celebration, SAMHSA recognizes three leaders who have had significant impact on the mental health of their communities and beyond and have been important contributors to SAMHSA’s efforts to advance behavioral health equity for African Americans.  

Each of these leaders has had a significant role in SAMHSA’s National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health (NNED).  Operated by SAMHSA’s Office of Behavioral Health Equity (OBHE), the NNED is a network of over 1,000 community-based organizations that address the mental health and substance use needs of diverse racial and ethnic communities. The NNED supports information sharing, learning collaboratives, and technical assistance to build prevention and treatment capacity needed to improve behavioral health outcomes. Additionally, OBHE convenes the annual NNEDLearn training meeting. This meeting is designed to assist network organizations in developing the required skills and capacity for implementing selected evidence-based and culturally-adapted prevention and treatment practices.

Altha Stewart, MD, a key member of the NNED since 2009, continues to participate on the NNED Steering Committee. Dr. Stewart is a nationally recognized expert in the public sector, on issues in mental health care for minority populations, and in the effects of trauma and violence on children. 

Gayle Porter, PsyD is the co-developer and trainer of the award-winning Prime-Time Sisters Circle with Marilyn Gaston, MD, former assistant surgeon general.  Prime-Time Sisters Circle is a theory-driven, empirically supported behavioral health intervention geared for middle-aged African American women. 

Howard Stevenson, PhD, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Racial Empowerment Collaborative and the Forward Promise program, is the developer and trainer of Preventing Long-term Anger and Aggression in Youth (PLAAY).  The intervention empowers youth, families and individuals to address the impact of trauma and chronic stress on African American boys. 

Read more on SAMHSA.gov.

The use of peer support to assist patients with serious mental illness (SMI) at mental health centers has increased over the past 15 years—spurred in part by recommendations of President George W. Bush’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health to place greater emphasis on patient resiliency and recovery in mental health care.

“The role of psychiatrists and other health professionals should not be understated in patient recovery, but when it comes to understanding a patient’s life experience, we are in another world,” said William Sledge, M.D., the George D. and Esther S. Gross Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Yale and former medical director of Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital. “The mentors are able to connect and build relationships in a way we cannot. And that relationship is a primary vehicle for change.”

To qualify for a peer mentor position, individuals are expected to be in recovery from an SMI themselves, have strong interpersonal skills, and a desire to help others in the community. The mentors receive training in principles of recovery by Chyrell Bellamy, Ph.D., M.S.W., director of peer services and research at the Program for Recovery and Community Health, and they participate in weekly team meetings with supervisors. Following training, peer mentors are given independence in how and how often they provide support.

“We know that mentors, through their shared experiences, will come up with things we could never think of,” said Martha Staeheli, Ph.D., an associate research scientist who leads the weekly team meetings. “We let them tell their own stories and let magic and alchemy take its course.”

Nine months after the participants were discharged, those assigned to the peer mentor program had on average improved physical health, better hygiene/self-care, fewer unusual thoughts or behaviors, and less substance use than those receiving standard care. Additionally, the individuals in the mentor group had double the average time to psychiatric rehospitalization than those receiving standard care—270 days compared with 135 days.

“Peer support programs remain a contentious issue,” said Larry Davidson, Ph.D., who has directed the Program for Recovery and Community Health since 2000. Some physicians still have concerns that working in a mental health setting may be too stressful or burdensome for people recovering from SMI or that they need extra supervision, which bogs down the rest of the staff, he said. “Getting good data to the contrary, particularly our rehospitalization data, is important.”

Read more on PsychiatricNews.com.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC is calling for nominations for their annual event, the American Courage Awards. The 2019 American Courage Awards will showcase their storied history and provide the opportunity to honor individuals and organizations who have shown extraordinary commitment to civil and human rights. With your help, AAJC hopes to gather a diverse group of nominees from which to choose the best honorees for each award.

Minimum Criteria for Consideration:

1. An identifiable act or group of acts that clearly demonstrate extraordinary courage or commitment to the cause of civil rights.
2. The act for which the person/group is being nominated must have brought benefits to the Asian American and/or civil rights community in the United States.
3. The person/group must have a story that is inspiring and engaging.
4. The person/group and their act/acts should be “widely known” within a given region or throughout the country.
5. The person/group representative must be a strong speaker.

All nominations are due by Friday, March 1, 2019. The description of the awards are below:

• The American Courage Award goes to an individual, company, or organization that has shown extraordinary courage or commitment to the cause of civil rights. This may include a corporate leader who has taken an important stand, an activist who overcame extraordinary challenges, an artist with a unique vision, or a journalist breaking an important story.
• The Changemaker Award honors an individual, company, or organization who is a catalyst for change. This may include an entrepreneur, student or activist whose leadership has inspired action that has led to change on a local or national level that benefits Asian American communities.

View last year’s nominees.

To nominate an individual or organization for an award, complete AAJC’s 2019 American Courage Award and Changemaker Award online nomination form by March 1, 2019.

You may know Taraji P. Henson from her award-winning performances in Empire, Hidden Figures, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. What may be news is that Henson is deeply concerned about the perception of mental illness in black communities, as well as the lack of culturally competent, high-quality care available to this population. In 2018, she started a foundation to address these issues named after her late father: the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation (BLHF).

“Silence for Black people must end. We want to provide a safe environment for African-Americans to discuss their concerns in a space where they will not be persecuted or misunderstood,” the foundation states.

BLHF aims to “support organizations who educate, celebrate and make visible the positive impact of mental health wellness.” Its specific emphasis on black mental health is somewhat unique in the philanthrosphere, and it could therefore lay down a new grantmaking path for other funders to follow.

“My dad fought in the Vietnam War for our country, returned broken, and received little to no physical and emotional support. I stand in his absence, committed to offering support to African-Americans who face trauma daily, simply because they’re Black,” Henson said. The foundation plans to approach this goal with a three-pronged approach: by supporting mental health services for urban youth, backing re-entry programs for people leaving prison, and boosting cultural competency and black representation in the mental healthcare field.

The foundation points out black children, who are more likely to experience trauma, have increasing rates of suicide, ADHD and behavioral disorders. It aims to increase urban youth access to mental healthcare in schools that demonstrate the highest need, “based on research and data collected from working groups consisting of principals, counselors, teachers, social workers, parents and therapists.” In this work, they will be joining a league of physical and mental health funders who are also trying to reach traumatized children before they grow up into adults with myriad difficulties.

Read more on InsidePhilanthropy.com.

This article was written by and from the perspective of Kimberly Kjome.

My father was a man to be emulated. He was the typical masculine type: foreman of a big machine shop, respected by those in his charge, a big talker with a good sense of humor. He was a war veteran and always an officer of the local VFW. No one would have dared to challenge his “fitness” or call him “weak.”

He also had post-traumatic stress disorder. He never would have said so because of his own perceptions and the feared perception of others, despite his suffering and the repercussions it had for him and his family. He never received help — partially because he did not seek it out because of the stigma but also because at the time help was simply not available.

As a psychiatrist, I encounter many frustrations regarding lack of appropriate services, disparities to care and the stigma that surrounds mental health. Some of the ugliest stigma exists regarding the diagnosis of PTSD, wrongheadedly due to a culture that values “being strong” or “getting over” adversity.

This culture is intensified in the military. Veterans with PTSD are constantly bombarded with dismissal and shaming in the form of others’ ignorance about their diagnosis but also in the words that we and more importantly our leaders use to continue this stigma. Nothing is so disheartening as the vulgar epithets I have heard veterans with PTSD use to describe themselves, use to describe this “weakness.” Hearing them describe themselves in these ways is heartbreaking. The stigma we perpetuate is a fundamental disrespect to our veterans with PTSD.

Read more on WacoTrib.com.