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The pandemic has caused a rise in mental health concerns for Hawaii’s homeless community.

“The pandemic has been a stressful time for most members of the community,” says Scott Morishige, the Governor’s Coordinator on Homelessness. “For the general community, the pandemic has impacted the ability of individuals to gather socially, caused financial stress due to loss of employment or work hours, and have prevented people from participating in activities they typically take part in for stress relief. Individuals in the homeless community experience all of these same impacts, as well as additional stress caused by the closure of public restrooms or other facilities, and the closure of places such as the public library or other public gathering spaces.”

In addition, the pandemic has been stressful for homeless service providers who serve on the front lines – working at emergency shelters, or going out in the street to continue to provide services even when the rest of the community was locked down.

According to Morishige, “At the beginning of the pandemic, the State worked to reopen public restroom facilities on State lands. For example, our Department of Land and Natural Resources opened up comfort stations at small boat harbors statewide and partnered with community groups to keep these bathrooms open. We also worked together with HIEMA, Department of Human Services, Department of Health, and others to get Personal Protective Equipment, including masks, out to the houseless community, as well as to providers so that providers could continue their essential services. “

The State also worked to increase the flow of information for homeless service and behavioral health providers statewide by partnering with the Department of Health to conduct weekly zoom webinars to provide updates on the pandemic response.

For those experiencing mental health challenges, there are a number of helpful resources available. One key resource is the Hawaii CARES line, which is a 24-hour hotline that provides assistance with behavioral health resources for those experiencing mental illness or substance use.

Read more at KHon.com.

The first time Jacqueline Garcia sought therapy, she was in college. She’d lived in Tijuana until she was 12, and she had struggled with the transition when her family immigrated to the United States.

She signed up for an initial therapy session with a mental health professional but never made a second appointment. She said she didn’t feel like her white therapist understood or validated her experiences.

Five years passed before Garcia was ready to search for a therapist again. She wanted to work with a bilingual mental health professional who could understand her childhood and its effects on her young-adult life.

“Having someone who is not culturally competent and/or informed can lead to experiencing microaggressions, feeling misunderstood, or even perpetuating oppressive behaviors,” said Lydiana Garcia, a Los Angeles-based psychologist.

A culturally competent mental health professional, by contrast, aims to be sensitive to and understand your cultural background. That includes your values, race, and religious or spiritual beliefs.

A therapist with this kind of training allows you to focus on talking about your experiences and how you’re feeling without having to explain the nuances of your family dynamic or upbringing.

Lydiana Garcia; Katheryn Perez, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Burbank; and Angelica Tello, assistant professor of counseling at the University of Houston-Clear Lake share some tips for Latinos looking for a culturally competent therapist.

Read more at LATimes.com.

More than 18 months into the pandemic, the Navajo Nation, once the area in the United States hit hardest by COVID-19, is now one of the safest. Back in March 2020, clan members congregated for a social gathering and then returned to their homes in different regions throughout the reservation—many of which are multigenerational. It allowed the virus to take advantage of the tight-knit Navajo community, according to its president, Jonathan Nez.

“At that time, we thought we could stop it,” Nez said. “Once we brought that virus back into the home, it just spread and it took a toll on us. We had to mobilize, and a lot of it was getting out there on social media, getting on the radio and letting people know that the safest place to be was at home.”

The solution, Nez said, has been the community’s prioritization of collective responsibility in its ongoing vaccination efforts.

The Navajo Nation boasts a 72 percent vaccination rate among eligible residents—a benchmark higher than the nationwide rate of nearly 62 percent. Mary Owen, president of the Association of American Indian Physicians and director of the Center of American Indian and Minority Health is also worried about the prevailing mental health crisis on the Navajo Nation. Experts say that Indigenous people are at higher risk for mental health problems and financial difficulties due to COVID, which have been exacerbated by social isolation and the nation’s high death rate.

The nation’s leaders, however, are optimistic that the tenacity of their community, passed down over scores of generations of Navajos, will help them overcome the disproportionate effects of the global pandemic.

Read more at TheNation.com.

Trim day at the barbershop can bring a sharp line or fade, but now that time in a chair comes with much more than a dope cut.

Through a program called The Confess Project, licensed barbers are trained to be mental health champions for Black men who are less likely to see a therapist. Many clients say barbershops are a safe place for African American men, and it’s in the barber’s chair that clients get a fresh look designed with mental healing.

Organization founder and Little Rock, Arkansas, native Lorenzo Lewis struggled with his own mental health issues for years.

“It started with just my story, my own depression, and it’s a national movement,” Lewis explained.

It is a movement that began in 2016 and now consists of more than 1,000 barbers in 15 states who are trained how to listen, detect problems and guide clients to professional help if needed.

The mental health advocate said it is tough getting Black men to the therapist. According to the Office of Minority Health from the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, suicide was the second leading cause of death for African Americans between 15 to 24 in 2019. A year earlier, the rate of suicide for black men was four times higher than for Black women.

In each city, The Confess Project has a partnership with mental health treatment centers where men are encouraged to go if they are having problems that need serious attention.

“Our barbers are pure ‘intervention specialists,’ I like to call them,” Lewis said. “They’re advocates on the front lines, and they really support someone through conversation that can really lead to true impact, true quality of life change.”

Read more at Fox5SanDiego.com.

If this pandemic has had a silver lining, it’s the fact that many more people are now aware of the importance of mental health. Unfortunately, this is in part due to the pandemic’s harrowing effect on people’s mental wellbeing. Just last month, the U.S. Surgeon General declared that young people were facing a mental health crisis. Many therapists have described the uptick in reported mental health concerns across the country as a “second pandemic.”

“COVID-19 has shown people that mental health is real, mental health can be severe, mental health can be difficult to treat, and mental health resources may be difficult to access,” Candice Tate, MD, MBA, medical director at Magellan Healthcare, told Verywell.

The pandemic was unexpected, and the world did not have enough time to prepare for these abrupt changes, Tate added.

National surveys have shown that more than 28% of adults in the U.S. reported having anxiety in the last year and more than 22% reported symptoms of depression. The locations hit hardest by the pandemic also saw the biggest toll on mental health.

This is especially true for people directly working on the frontlines like healthcare workers. One study found that in the U.S., more than 80% of medical staff survey responders had depression symptoms and almost 25% noted they had been thinking about suicide or self-harm. Nearly 50% of medical staff surveyed also said that the pandemic had somewhat or significantly reduced their chances of continuing their work in this field.

This increased awareness has pushed institutions—from schools to the workplace—to start taking the problem seriously by facilitating conversations around the topic. But is this willingness to accept mental health conditions here to stay? Verywell asked experts to weigh in. Many are hopeful that this newfound awareness will guide us in a positive direction for the future.

Read more at VerywellHealth.com.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has opened conversations about improving behavioral health across the nation, and the importance of creating robust, communicative systems of care. In Hawaii, the state’s unique geography and cultural demographics have led to the development of a diverse network of behavioral health services. State of Reform spoke with some of the organizations offering these services about improving access to behavioral health care in the state.

In Hawaii, people experiencing mental health crises or are seeking mental health and substance use disorder services can utilize Hawaii CARES, which offers a free 24/7, statewide call center. Hawaii CARES also works with partners in the criminal justice system and homelessness sector to provide access to behavioral health services for underserved communities.

One of the barriers to behavioral health care, according to Hawaii CARES Clinical Director Dr. Leocadia Conlon, is the amount of time it may take for a person to gain admission into a substance use disorder treatment facility program. To help mitigate this problem, Hawaii CARES refers callers to a bed stabilization program, where people can stay while waiting to enter a facility. Bed stabilization programs are also available to help individuals in mental health crises avoid hospitalization.

Hawaii CARES can refer clients to services under the Department of Health by dispatching a crisis mobile outreach, where a crisis therapist will meet a client in the community and try to help them resolve the crisis in the “least restrictive setting.”

All of these programs require constant communication with different agencies around the state. Dr. Conlon explained that this communication and collaboration are necessary to maintain programs that can best serve the complex behavioral health needs of the community.

Read more at StateofReform.com.