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In order to highlight pockets of excellence across the country, the NNED selects a partner organization to highlight once a month. Fragile Families NETWORK has been selected as the Partner of the Month for December.

Grandfamilies are created when a grandparent or other family member raises the child of a relative unable or unwilling to parent. The Fragile Families NETWORK mission is to provide supportive services to grandfamilies, and education and training to health and human service providers.

Some of the programs and services that are currently offered:

• Virtual Listening Circles
• Support Group
• Wellness Programs
• Faith Services
• Human Service Professionals Education and Training

Learn more about Fragile Families NETWORK and its mission to improve the lives of grandfamilies through mental health support, wellness, and training.

View a list of previous NNED Partners of the Month.

When University of Pennsylvania doctoral student Helena Addison worked as a nurse at an inpatient psychiatric hospital, she encountered many people who had previously been incarcerated. The interactions made her want to better understand the mental health fallout from such an experience.

“Initially, I was looking at incarceration as a source of trauma for Black men,” says Addison, a fourth-year Presidential Ph.D. Fellow in Penn’s School of Nursing. “As I learned more, it broadened to the idea of incarceration as a social determinant of health, still specifically looking at mental health.”

In collaboration with Sara Jacoby, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing, Addison evaluated what science currently knows about the psychological ramifications for Black men of going through such a detention. Reviewing nearly two dozen articles from the past decade, she discovered that for this group in the United States there exists a link between incarceration and higher levels of psychological distress, more severe symptoms of PTSD and depression, and many other facets of poor mental health.

“Incarceration is underappreciated as a social determinant of health,” says Jacoby, whose research focuses on trauma and violence. “It’s something that we talk about, but it’s not something that’s always articulated so specifically. This work does so in a way that has been lacking for nursing and a broader health care audience.”

Her main objective had been to identify differences in mental health outcomes between formerly incarcerated and never incarcerated Black men. “In that context,” she says, “both had poor mental health outcomes associated with things like unemployment and family conflict. But Black men who had been incarcerated had more PTSD symptoms. That’s one instance where you can see, despite these groups experiencing some of the same trauma, incarceration specifically had an impact.”

Longer imprisonment and time spent in solitary confinement mattered, too, increasing the negative mental health symptoms formerly incarcerated Black men suffered later. Despite that, Addison and Jacoby found that few of these men discussed seeking help, reporting barriers such as long waits and a need to prioritize different aspects of their reentry like housing or employment.

Read more at PennToday.UPenn.edu.

Bipolar disorder — a mental health condition characterized by periods of extreme highs (mania) and deep lows (depression) — affects 2.8 percent of U.S. adults. While marginalized racial and ethnic communities, such as Black and Hispanic-Latinx people, are no less likely to experience bipolar disorder than white people, research shows that these communities are not adequately diagnosed and treated for it compared with white people.

“Either their symptoms or presenting concerns are minimized, and they are not given any care, or they are given a completely different diagnosis and one where the treatment can be detrimental to the progress they need,” says Taish Malone, PhD, a licensed professional counselor with Mindpath Health in Fort Worth, Texas.

For instance, people of African descent with bipolar disorder are more likely to receive an incorrect diagnosis than people of European ancestry with the condition, according to an article published in September 2018 in Bipolar Disorders. And Hispanic people with bipolar disorder are less likely to get the treatment they need than white people with the condition, per a small study published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.

These disparities have many cultural and societal causes, likely requiring multifaceted solutions. Here’s what researchers know so far about racial and ethnic diagnostic and treatment inequities in bipolar disorder — and ways to solve the problem.

Read more at EverydayHealth.com.

We invite you to join this informational virtual workshop led by Kathy Downey Piscopo and Sam Brown from SAMHSA’s Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (CBHSQ) to learn how to use SAMHSA data and tools to advance your behavioral health equity work. This opportunity intends to provide technical assistance to National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health (NNED) members (free to join) and minority-serving and under-resourced community-based organizations (CBOs). This event is a continuation of the Elevate CBOs Webinar Series, an overarching policy-driven initiative from SAMHSA’s Office of Behavioral Health Equity that began in 2021.

By attending this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Understand SAMHSA’s CBHSQ data sources, including which to use for different types of information
• Learn what kind of reports, data tables, data files, and analytic tools are available via CBHSQ webpages
• Learn how to use CBHSQ’s publicly available analysis tools to find data needed, with an emphasis on data equity information

Speakers:

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

“Elevate CBOs” is an overarching policy-driven initiative at SAMHSA’s OBHE to build capacity, increase the visibility, and highlight the unique role of CBOs serving under-resourced communities in behavioral health.

In Honolulu, a local veteran is kicking off a podcast called “1 Mile 1 Veteran” to help prevent suicides in the veteran community.

The host and founder, Danny Mayberry served in the Navy for 11 years with several deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. After returning to Hawaii, he said he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and wants to help veterans with their path to healing.

“These conversations around mental health need to be normalized. We need to get rid of the stigma that seeking help is a sign of weakness. Everything you do in life, you do as a team in a community. We all want to build each other up and that’s what the veteran community wants to do,” said Mayberry.

Suicide among veterans has steadily gone up nationally over the past two decades. According to a report by the Department of Veterans Affairs, suicide accounted for 217 deaths in Hawaii in 2019 and 17 of them were veterans.

However, some officials believe that number is actually higher.

“We have to take everyone into consideration. There are those that are actively serving, those with prior service, those in the reserves and even family members of veterans. A lot of those people have attempted and/or contemplated suicide. That number is significantly higher actually,” said Alim Shabazz, Coast Guard auxiliary member.

The “1 Mile 1 Veteran” podcast kicked off Labor Day and will stream on Spotify, Google Podcast and Apple Podcast.

Host and founder, Danny Mayberry said he wants to help veterans with all forms of health – mental, physical, spiritual relational, and professional, and find ways to fight negative thoughts like stress and anxiety.

Read more at KITV.com.

It’s no secret that there is a stigma in the mental health field, no matter the demographic. People are afraid to go to therapy because of how it may look to other people (for the record, it looks healthy). And while this spans across cultures, when it comes to the Hispanic community, “there is a negative perception about mental health care in general,” said Dr. Ruby Castilla-Puentes, the president of the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry. Because of this, “there are misunderstandings about mental health.”

This can make it hard for people in the Latine community to realize they need help, talk to loved ones about mental health, and ultimately seek treatment. But, there are many experts who focus on creating safe spaces where people can explore their identity, their emotions, their problems and more.

“Hispanic folks are looking for mental health providers that are culturally competent,” Castilla-Puentes said, adding that this can mean a therapist who speaks Spanish or someone with a deep knowledge of Hispanic-Latino culture.

Castilla-Puentes noted that miscommunication, either because of language barriers or cultural misunderstandings, causes many people in the Latine community to feel misunderstood by people in the mental health field. This can cause a “lack of confidence in the ability to receive the service that they need,” she added.

That being said, Brandie Carlos, the founder of Therapy for Latinx, noted that as a community, there is a large spectrum of cultures and beliefs. “We’re not a monolith,” she said. So, what’s right for one person may not be right for another. “What is most important is to get clear on what is important to you when you’re looking for a therapist,” she noted.

Make a list of the things you want your therapist to understand about you, your family or your culture, or make a list of the languages you want them to speak. Carlos noted that some people don’t want to go through the trouble of translating certain phrases from Spanish to English in therapy, while other people purely want someone who will speak English. It’s a totally personal preference.

Additionally, you should decide what goals you want to achieve in therapy and what subject areas you want to focus on. From there, ask questions when you meet with therapists to see if they are a fit for you.

Read more at HuffPost.com.