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There are an estimated 22 military veterans who take their lives every day according to the Military Veteran Project. What do we need to know about mental health for those who serve? It’s a combination of awareness, community effort, and removing the stigma.

“You know all of a sudden I’m locking my doors six, seven times, I’m sleeping with a shotgun next to my bed, you know it’s these little things, cause you just think of security,” said Cody Knapp is a former specialist for the Army National Guard. Knapp served in Guantanamo Bay as a prison guard and tells me the area where he was stationed was looked at as a vacation spot among other military personnel.

Katie Coric is a Suicide Prevention Coordinator for Veteran’s Affairs. She notes that one issue surrounding mental health is the stigma which betters over time as a community effort, “You know maybe if I go to mental health counseling I let a few people know and maybe that decreases the stigma if they need to go to mental health counseling. I think being willing to share our own experiences with mental health and kind of what helped us helps too,” said Coric.

Read more at News10.com.

Migrants and refugees often face various problems and stressors which can take place at various stages of the migration process which can increase the risk of developing mental health conditions. For example, unemployment, poor socioeconomic conditions, and lack of social integration among migrants and refugees are risk factors for mental health conditions such as depression. At the same time, these stressors can also exacerbate pre-existing social and mental health problems.

Factors that negatively impact the mental health and well-being of migrant and refugee children include socioeconomic deprivation, discrimination, racism, low family cohesion, and frequent school changes. Children who have been separated from migrating parents are at heightened risk of developing depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, conduct disorder, and substance use problems.

Many migrants and refugees will experience distress (e.g. feelings of anxiety and sadness, hopelessness, difficulty sleeping, fatigue, irritability, anger and/or aches and pains). For most people, these reactions will improve over time.

Some studies show that the prevalence of common mental disorders (e.g. depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) is higher among migrants and refugees than among host populations. Asylum seekers tend to be at elevated risk of suicide. There is also consistent evidence that the incidence of psychoses is higher among migrant populations in a number of countries, and this has been linked with the cumulative effect of social disadvantages before, during, and after migration.

A comprehensive, multi-disciplinary and inclusive approach is needed to address the mental health needs of migrants and refugees.

Read more at WHO.int.

The impact of the coronavirus on Hispanic and Latinx populations, who have been disproportionately affected, has been discerning. Adding to the challenges, the community has been coping with a mental healthcare system that wasn’t built with them in mind. To adequately move forward in meeting the mental health needs of Hispanics-Latinxs, beyond conventional structures and practices, thought leaders say it is critical to focus on culture. Although some aspects of culture contribute to stigmatized views of mental health, it might also be the solution.

“We were comfortable because we just put our heads down, and we’d keep going, and I think that’s what we’d been taught to do. Sigue, sigue, sigue, trabajando, sigue. Go, go, go, go, go, and when we look up again, we find ourselves in chaos because we haven’t looked up in so long.”

Mental health counselor and owner of Advocacy and Education Consulting Pamela Fullerton describes the mentality culturally ingrained into many Hispanics-Latinos: no matter what, keep working. As a result, conversations about self-care, work-life balance, and mental health are much less common, which comes at a price.

Laura Martinez, Mental Health Equity and Inclusion Director of NAMI Illinois, says that culture influences people’s issues and how they cope with things like grief. She says that mental health providers continue to do a disservice to people of color by not implementing their customs into treatment. It may be a trial and error process to find one’s individualized and preferred method, but doing so creates trust and allows people to feel more comfortable opening up.

Read more at ChicagoReporter.com.

The Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and mental health organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people, announced Janelle Monáe (they/them or she/her pronouns) as the recipient of its 2022 Suicide Prevention Advocate of the Year Award, which recognizes influential public figures for their unwavering commitment to LGBTQ mental health awareness. The second annual award marks September’s National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and amplifies The Trevor Project’s mission to end suicide among LGBTQ young people. Monáe joins Lil Nas X – who was the inaugural recipient of the award in 2021 – in receiving this powerful honor that reminds LGBTQ young people that they are not alone.

In accepting the award, Monáe said: “Growing up queer and Black in a religious household, I faced a lot of challenges trying to understand my identity and where I fit in as someone who always felt beyond the binary. We, as LGBTQ folks, as people of color, are a powerful and unstoppable community. I want every young queer person out there to know that I see you, you are beautiful in all of your forms, and you are never, ever alone in this world. As someone who has dealt with depression and anxiety, prioritizing and protecting your mental health is everything. Amazing organizations like The Trevor Project have got your back, and I will personally continue to advocate for you and celebrate you always. No matter what you’re going through, your life matters so much — don’t let anyone try to dim your light. Thank you to The Trevor Project for this incredible honor and for all that you do to support LGBTQ young people.”

Read more at PRNewsWire.com.

Asian American elders experience significantly lower life satisfaction and receive less emotional support than their peers of other races, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

The research, published in January and peer-reviewed, draws on 2018 data from the California Health Interview Survey, the largest state health survey in the U.S. The sample consisted of nearly 8,200 individuals 65 years and older, including people of Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and Vietnamese descent.

Among Asian Americans, Korean elders reported the lowest level of life satisfaction, at 40 percent. Less than one-third of Korean participants said they received needed social and emotional support, compared to nearly two-thirds of Chinese and Filipino respondents.

DJ Ida, executive director of the National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association, said a number of social and cultural factors make aging a particularly agonizing process for people from marginalized communities.

“In general, mental health needs increase as people get older,” she said, noting that physical and emotional exhaustion, as well as “the sense of anxiety around the meaning of life,” all grow more acute with age. “But our health care facilities are not adequate for the needs of the Asian community.”

Read more at NBCNews.com.

Brought Plenty remembers the day she was taken out of class and sent to boarding school, away from her grandparents’ house where she lived.

“I was sitting up in the corner by one of the windows, and I saw two men come walking in the door,” Plenty said. “They had the black suits on with a white shirt and black tie, walked in the school and he was talking to the teacher. Then she pointed at me, and they just came over and each one of them grabbed me by my arms and walked me out.”

Plenty was just 6 years old at the time. She is now 70, and the experiences at the Pierre Indian Boarding school in South Dakota are ones that still stay with her. At that time, Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families by the federal government and placed in boarding schools to culturally strip them of their identities, languages, and beliefs.

Since Interior Secretary Deb Haaland made the reckoning and accounting of federally-run boarding schools a priority during her administration, hundreds of Indigenous people like Plenty have come forward to testify about their experiences during their time in the boarding schools.

All of them experienced things like Plenty did: both physical and mental abuse, including the pain of being separated from their families. Many boarding school survivors just started talking about the years of abuse they endured for the first time. Those experiences are passed down to children and other family members in the form of intergenerational trauma.

Tribal and spiritual practices that are from the survivors’ tribal nations, traditional forms of healing-like ceremony, and the sense of community are what some psychologists who are part of the Society of Indian Psychologists say are important to healing.

Read more at Newsy.com.