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Travis Snyder has seen his fair share of combat, and he knows exactly how difficult it can be to re-enter society after spending time in a war zone.

The Michigan man is a marine veteran who served as a corporal in Afghanistan from 2017 until 2018. After retiring and returning back to the United States, he began struggling with his mental health — and he wasn’t the only one who felt this way. He watched his military friends battle PTSD and other challenges as well. In 2019, Travis lost one of his good friends and former suitemates to suicide. The loss opened his eyes to a tragic reality: Around 17 veterans die by suicide in the U.S. every single day. Travis became determined to increase awareness of this fact and has found ways to help veterans access mental health resources to reintegrate into civilian life after combat.

That August, Travis packed up his backpack and embarked on a trek that would take him all the way around Lake Michigan, a journey of 810 miles. He finished his first hike around the lake on October 6th 2019, just 42 days after he set out.

But one hike wasn’t enough. With a goal of promoting veteran suicide awareness, he teamed up with the non-profit Mission 22, an organization which provides veterans with mental health support and resources. With each hike he takes, Travis collects donations for them using Facebook.

He uses his open video forums as a chance to discuss difficult topics like suicide, refugees, and other potentially-painful yet necessary issues. Plus, the platform gives him a way to share videos and pictures from his journey.

Travis plans to continue his walks as long as it’s necessary to do so. He hopes his efforts lead to open and honest discussions around mental health and removing the stigma around suicide for his fellow veterans. He’s already planning another trek for 2023, perhaps around Lake Superior this time.

Read more at InspireMore.com.

Awareness of mental health care as a key part of holistic health is growing. Even so, a lack of access to proper care and the stigma that surrounds talking about our mental health remain. In particular, Black, Indigenous, and other persons of color – as well as LGBTQIA+ populations – face stigma, structural barriers, and other unique challenges to accessing quality mental health care. It’s crucial that we continue to highlight these struggles and recognize how programs are leveraging education, understanding and advocacy to expand quality mental health care to communities that have long been overlooked and underserved.

Those who are ready to talk about their mental health with a professional might be challenged to find a health care provider who understands their experiences and what it will take to address their needs.

Thankfully, several sectors of the U.S. health care system are working on expanding access to mental health resources to underserved populations. Successful mental health programs are rooted in the common threads of education, understanding, advocacy and support. For example, CVS Health’s Here4U program is a virtual peer-support group facilitated by a licensed clinician that can be tailored for specific populations such as young adults, parents and Black and LGBTQIA+ communities. As part of the program, participants can discuss life challenges, pressing issues, and events or changes at home with their peers while learning new skills to improve their mental well-being.

It’s not just about educating people experiencing mental health struggles, however. We must educate the clinicians treating patients as well, as they often play an essential role in helping Americans address their mental health. With this in mind, Aetna introduced a four-course continuing education series for behavioral health professionals to increase their cultural and linguistic competencies. Through training and education, these providers can better equip themselves to identify mental health risk factors and engage in proactive, personalized treatment for their patients.

Read more at USNews.com.

What do Hispanics fear more than a friend arriving on time (or even worse, EARLY) to the party they are hosting? The answer: talking about mental illnesses! As much as Hispanics turn a blind eye to being “on time”, they close both eyes to any sort of conversation about mental illnesses or therapy. And trust me, it’s not because Hispanics are somehow immune to mental health illnesses. It’s largely due to the fact that, culturally, Hispanics tend to prioritize personal resilience over vulnerability; which puts them in a position where “asking for help” is the last option.

Growing up in a Mexican household, this was very much the case. Any time anyone wasn’t feeling mentally well, the answer was something like “eat some pozole, you’ll feel better”. For more extreme displays of mental issues, one was called ‘loco’ and silently dismissed. These examples are becoming more and more problematic as the rate of mental illnesses becomes pervasive across all ethnic groups.

In the United States alone, more than 16% of the Latinx community struggles with a mental health condition. This is nearly 10 million people. This is roughly the population of a country like Greece or Sweden. Imagine if everyone in Greece had a mental health illness and no one sought help or at the very least, therapy!? Those picturesque, well-visited islands, like Santorini, would cease to exist. And while mental health doesn’t discriminate against any one community, it does affect non-White populations at prolonged rates.

Stigma plays an antagonist role here and starts the domino effect: stigma can mean it’s taboo to talk about, read about, or even think about how you might be struggling with depression, anxiety, anger issues, or even an eating disorder. Then, this stigma can further lead to lack of information easily and readily available.

Read more at Forbes.com.

Psychologists use the term trauma to describe an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Racial trauma, or race-based traumatic stress, refers to the specific mental and emotional harms linked to racism and discrimination. The high rate of people who experience racism, and subsequent racial trauma, highlights the need to address the heinous nature of systemic racism in the US. Race-based trauma is serious and can lead to severe effects, psychologically and medically.

Race-based trauma (or race-based traumatic stress) refers to the emotional and mental injuries that result from continued exposure to racism, ethnic discrimination, racial bias, and hate crimes. In the United States, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities tend to be most vulnerable to racial trauma because of the culture and history of racism in the country, but it’s worth noting that any individual who suffers emotionally because of a racist encounter can experience racial trauma. Racial trauma can happen on a micro or macro scale. Macroaggressions that can cause racial trauma include society-level events or policies that discriminate against Black people, such as examples of police brutality, like the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

The effects of racial trauma on health and well-being are complex and well documented and can be severe.

For marginalized groups, like Black people and other BIPOC communities, continuous discrimination and racism become a form of chronic stress. Research shows this, as well as that the health consequences of racism and discrimination can be passed down from one generation to the next.

Data from the Jackson Heart Study (an ongoing study that started in 2000, following more than 5,000 African Americans to better understand disparities in cardiovascular disease) has revealed that higher levels of perceived discrimination among African Americans in the US are linked with poorer health behaviors, such as sleeping less and smoking, as well as worse health outcomes, such as higher incidence of obesity.

Part of what makes racial trauma so insidious is that many of the symptoms stem from the fear that similar traumas will happen again. There’s a fear of not just how a person of color may be treated or of an isolated event, but that their safety is at stake and that this can happen again. When you’re mentally and emotionally always on guard like that, it creates a physiological stress response — it produces cortisol, she explains. That’s normal and healthy if it happens on occasion in response to a stressor you need to deal with. But if it’s happening all the time it can cause all sorts of damage to the body and contribute to anxiety, heart disease, depression, and psychological or cognitive impairment.

Read more at Forbes.com.

Feeling lonely is a common part of the human experience but that doesn’t make loneliness easier to handle. Starting with Thanksgiving and ending with the grand finale — New Year’s Eve — the focus of the next few weeks is on celebrating with family, coworkers, neighbors, and friends.

While many people embrace this time of year and feel joyous, for others, it’s a difficult season. If you live with mental illness, the extra stress and anxiety of the season can trigger symptoms. In 2014 the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reported that 64% of people with mental illness said the holidays worsen their symptoms.

Reasons for loneliness can vary widely. If you’re grieving the loss of a loved one — and everywhere you look you are painful reminders of your loss — the holidays can amplify your grief. It’s also possible to be to feel lonely while in the company of others. So, it’s not just being physically alone.

“There is a cultural expectation, which is many times reinforced by Hollywood’s movies and other media outlets, that the holidays are a time when families and friends gather to enjoy time together, reconnect, enjoy old memories, and make new memories,“ explains clinical psychologist Samia Estrada.

Receiving greeting cards with photos of happy families together and looking at social media posts of “Friendsgiving” festivities when you are not included can trigger feelings of loneliness as well as depression and anxiety. Jessica Miller, a licensed mental health counselor, explains, “Many people do not feel loved or supported in general. They may have unreasonable expectations. This is true all year but is most noticeable during the holidays.”

Read more at PsyCom.net.

When Mariana Pimentel thinks about her childhood in a small town in Mexico, she remembers being surrounded by anger and desperation. Her parents worked long hours to support Pimentel and her brothers and sisters, so they were often absent. When they were home, her parents communicated by yelling.

“I want my kids to grow up in a different environment from how I grew up and not repeat the same mistakes,” said Pimentel, a 41-year-old mother of three.

Shifting away from the parenting style she grew up with took time and lots of work. Nine years ago, Pimentel, who lives in Salinas, began attending free classes on topics such as positive parenting and discipline at GoKids Inc., a nonprofit that provides early childhood education to lower-income families.

“I’ve noticed that if I am stressed or anxious, I will end up transmitting that to my kids. There is a connection,” Pimentel said. “The more I attend classes, the more I learn, the better I can help my children and the better off they will be.”

During the first year of the pandemic, nearly two-thirds of caregivers, including parents, reported adverse mental or behavioral health symptoms, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey. The survey also found that 27% of parents of children under 18 reported that their mental health worsened during the pandemic.

The need to come to terms with how parental mental health influences the mental health of children has come into sharper focus as the United States grapples with a crisis of children experiencing higher rates of anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide.

Children of color suffer the most, say experts, because services remain inaccessible to them for a variety of reasons.

Read more at KQED.org.