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Despite a decade of scrutiny on the issue, sexual assault and harassment in the military is still a pervasive problem. Recent estimates show that 6% of women in the military were sexually assaulted in the last year. Another 24% experienced sexual harassment.

While efforts to eradicate this problem continue, there is also this: The effects of the trauma from these assaults can be lasting, certainly stretching beyond the period of active duty. So it’s not just the military services, but also veterans’ services, that need to connect these women to appropriate care for mental health. On that front, there’s not been enough progress.

Women’s difficulties getting treatment for sexual trauma is, of course, not unique to the military. But like so many other things, serving in the military is a complicating factor.

In surveys, focus groups and interviews, female service members have explained how they are filled with self-doubt and shame after a sexually traumatic experience. They felt they should have been able to prevent or stop it. They worried what their peers or commanders would think. Or, they considered the trauma not “severe” enough to warrant getting care — perhaps especially if they are comparing their experience to that of combat.

Women who’d been assaulted or harassed also report in high numbers that they don’t trust military or veteran health systems or their providers. Adding more female psychiatrists, psychologists and other counselors could help. Research has found that victims of sexual trauma who asked for and couldn’t get female medical providers were more likely to opt out of Department of Veterans Affairs health care.

Read more at MilitaryTimes.com.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Office of Behavioral Health Equity (OBHE) invites you to join the second Behavioral Health Equity Challenge Winners Showcase on Wednesday, October 11 at 3:00-4:30 pm EDT. After the success of the first Showcase in September, we organized this second event in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month! During the Behavioral Health Equity Challenge Winners Showcase Part II, four of the ten Challenge winners — all serving the Hispanic/Latinx community — will share their innovative strategies, lessons learned from implementation, and recommendations for replication in other communities. CBOs, state and federal leaders, and behavioral health leaders are invited to join the Showcase to learn from and engage in Q&A with these Challenge Winners.

Earlier this year, SAMHSA launched the “Behavioral Health Equity Challenge: Outreach and Engagement Strategies for Underserved Racial and Ethnic Communities” with the goal of identifying and highlighting outreach and engagement strategies community-based organizations (CBOs) use to increase access to behavioral health services for racially and ethnically diverse, underserved communities.

To see the previously hosted Challenge Winner Showcase, visit NNEDShare.

The event will also be shared on Facebook Live at fb.com/nned.net and closed captioning will be available through Zoom.

• Learn more about the Behavioral Health Equity Challenge
• Learn about all 10 of the Challenge winners

Challenge Winner Presenters

Comunilife

Ser Familia

Centro de Ayuda y Esperanza Latina Inc.

Camden Coalition

It’s time to raise awareness in the immigrant community about the importance of mental health and end the stigma surrounding both mental illness and seeking professional help for it.

As a Somali immigrant in Maine, I understand the challenges of navigating mental health in a new community. In my first few months after moving to Maine, I experienced heart palpitations, leg twitches and insomnia. It didn’t occur to me that my problems required professional help. As an interpreter for Maine hospitals, I’ve met many Somali patients who are reluctant to discuss mental health issues with doctors or nurses. Mental health issues are perceived as weaknesses and could be a cause for someone to be shunned in the community.

The community often suggests reading verses from the Qur’an to alleviate fear and depression, but it’s time for immigrant communities to address mental health issues seriously and seek help beyond religion. It will take time, because that is not part of our culture. Mental health wasn’t a topic discussed openly in my entire experience before moving to Maine. It was considered taboo, and people preferred to suffer in silence rather than seek help. There was never a social structure in place to encourage people to get the help they needed without fear of being labeled as mentally ill or “mad.”

It wasn’t easy for me to break that barrier, to use those resources that fortunately were available to me, to sit face to face and speak with a therapist shortly after moving to Maine. I felt a bit embarrassed walking into the room, and initially I was hesitant to speak about my depression and anxiety and about the fear I experienced and the deaths I had seen growing up in a war-torn country. When I did speak about them, I got help to deal with them. Seeing a therapist also helped me understand that mental health problems are not a sign of weakness or personal failure. I came out feeling confident to openly discuss mental health, but still I struggled to discuss them with my community, where the stigma and misconceptions persist.

Read more at PressHerald.com.

A local group is taking a whole family approach to dealing with mental health in the Latino community.

A 12-week free program has started to address the needs of children as well as their parents. The program is being held at the Clark County School District Family Support Center and is being run by Fuente De Vida which is already serving dozens of Hispanic families.

The program, Family Forward, will go over a wide variety of topics including bullying, school shootings, and the culture clash between generations that many Hispanic families face. The intent is to provide mental health services to the entire family as a preventative measure.

“Give yourself a chance, make yourself some time to come to the program. The program is great we have very good professionals that know what they’re doing,” Guadlupe Morales said.

Morales attends the sessions. There was a strong turnout for the first two sessions and the hope is that the momentum will keep up. This is a trial run of the program and if it’s successful, Fuente De Vida will be seeking grants to keep it going.

Read more at 8NewsNow.com.

“It’s so magical and so very healing. The fact that I now get to play a role in it, the significance of placing prayers on the lanterns and the process that goes through it all, it is just so beautiful,” says Bryan Talisayan, Executive Director at Mental Health Alliance of Hawaii.

Bryan Talisayan has attended the Shinnyo Lantern Floating Hawaii ceremony many times as a spectator but this year, he was invited by a friend to volunteer.

“She thought because of the work I do it would be a good match. I cried actually when she invited me because I felt extremely honored,” says Talisayan.

Talisayan is the Executive Director of Mental Health America of Hawaii who started caregiving for his dad last year with help from his brother and nephew.

“I think the greatest lesson my father taught me was the capacity to heal, help, and how important that is. We had a very unique relationship growing up. I didn’t become close to my dad until I was 21 years old. My mom had died during that year, and I was living in Seattle. I came back and hugged my dad for the first time in I can’t remember how long it had been. It was at that moment did I realized that this is a very important process for us to begin to heal our relationship,” says Talisayan.

Talisayan says the ceremony allows people to honor their lost loved ones and to embrace the grieving process.

Read more at KHON2.com.

Ruimin Cai isn’t a talkative elder. Many days, he can be found quietly watching his friends play poker at Portsmouth Square, the so-called “living room” of San Francisco’s Chinatown.

“It’s so boring staying at home,” Cai said in Chinese. “I don’t know English. I have so much time.”

As with many older immigrants who moved to this country to reunite with families, language barriers meant Cai had no choice but to give up on assimilating into “mainstream” society. The consequences can be significant: loneliness and social isolation, depression and mental illness.

Every day, dozens of monolingual seniors escape their tiny single-room occupancy (SRO) homes and gather among Portsmouth Square’s benches and tables. They play poker, laughing and talking in their native tongues. They enjoy the feeling of being connected, not neglected.

“Most of us are over 70 or even 80 years old,” Cai said. “Except for two meals a day, this is what we are doing.”

Banding together for a brief relief from isolation, Cai and his poker buddies stand out among Chinatown’s large population of seniors. As the alleged assailants in two recent mass shootings are older Asian men, advocates are now shedding light on this often ignored and vulnerable community’s mental health needs.

Rudy Kao, a retired mental health counselor focusing on Chinese American immigrants, said the stigma surrounding mental illness in the Chinese community has pushed many families away from seeking help.

“Chinese people are afraid of talking about mental health, depression, et cetera,” Gao said.

Isolation and feelings of loneliness may develop into desperation, which can lead to violent behaviors.

Read more at SFStandard.com.