The Duchess of Cambridge Launches Mentally Healthy Schools

The Duchess of Cambridge Launches Mentally Healthy Schools, Heads Together’s new programme to support children’s mental wellbeing.

Click here or the video below to find out more.

Taking the mental health of children as seriously as we do their physical health is essential.
1 in 10 children experience a mental health difficultly by age 11
And more than half of all mental health problems in adult life start by the age of 14
These problems can have a long lasting impact on a person’s life, and teachers play an important role in supporting the children in their care.

But with so many resources available to teachers online, finding the right ones to use can be difficult, so we have developed ‘Mentally Healthy Schools’.

Working with our charity partners YoungMinds, Place2Be and Anna Freud Centre for Children and Families, and with expert guidance from NAHT and Centre for Mental Health, we have developed a free and easy to use website. It provides reliable and tested resources suitable for the classroom, which will help primary school teachers promote and support their pupils mental well being.

Mentally Healthy Schools is currently being piloted in a selection of schools. It will become available to every primary school in England shortly, and to schools in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in due course.

“The ultimate goal is that no primary school teacher, anywhere in the country should in future have to wonder where to turn when it comes to the wellbeing of children in their care.”
– The Duchess of Cambridge

When we get our Heads Together, we really can achieve great things.

Heads Together

Football, Friendship & Men’s Mental Health

Last week, we joined our charity partner CALM to show men all over the country that you don't need to wait until your wedding to be a best man.

The Duke of Cambridge met a number of staff, volunteers and supporters who have contributed to CALM’s new #BestManProject. The Duke also joined Rio Ferdinand, Loyle Carner, Roman Kemp, Carl Anka and their best mates to talk about what it means to be best man.

"If you can feel you can be vulnerable in front of someone else, and they can be vulnerable in front of you, then that's when you truly can be brave with each other, and help each other through something that's actually scary." - Loyle Carner

Watch their conversation now

CALM are doing fantastic work in suicide prevention and by joining the #BestManProject, you can find out ways you can be there for your mates more often.

Join the #BestManProject

Next Week: We're launching our schools project

Next week, The Duchess of Cambridge will launch Heads Together's new mental health project, supporting the well-being of young children in schools.

Discover how you can get involved and change the conversation on mental health here.

When we get our Heads Together, we really can achieve great things.

Self Loathing

Self-Loathing

Self-loathing is that underlying feeling that we are just not good: not good enough, not good at this, not good at that, not good at – or for –much of anything. It can be subtle, we may habitually compare ourselves to others, for instance, constantly finding fault with ourselves and putting ourselves down, with no real awareness that there is anything amiss. Or, we may listen intently to our critical inner voice while it scolds and berates us, telling us how embarrassing, stupid, or insensitive we are; refusing to challenge it even while we suffer from it.

We may try to suppress this feeling of inadequacy by behaving as though we are superior to others; more intelligent, clever, intuitive, or attractive. It’s as though we have to prove that we are the absolute best in order to avoid the torrent of internal abuse waiting to pounce the moment we show any fallibility.

However it is manifested, the self-loathing process is indicative of a divide that exists within all people between our healthy and realistic point of view toward ourselves and the internal enemy, or inner coach, that fights tooth and nail to assert its inimical ways of looking at ourselves and the lives we are living.

The Causes of Self-Loathing

According to Dr. Lisa Firestone and Joyce Catlett in the book Conquer your Critical Inner Voice, the causes of self-loathing lie in the past, when, as children, we were trying to cope with our lives in the best way possible. They explain:

The nature and degree of this division within ourselves depends on the parenting we received and the early environment we experienced. Parents, like all of us, have mixed feelings toward themselves; they have things they like about themselves and they have self-critical thoughts and feelings. The same negative feelings that parents have toward themselves are unfortunately often directed toward their children as well… In addition… if a parent has unresolved feelings from either trauma or loss in his or her past, this will impact his or her reactions to his or her children.

…Because of their acute sensitivity to pain and negative circumstances, children of all ages pay particular attention to, and are more affected by, even small incidences of parental anger. They may experience a parent’s anger, whether acted out or not, as being life-threatening. (Under extreme circumstances, they may be accurate in their perceptions.) In any case, children in stressful situations often feel threatened to the core of their being and frightened for their lives.

During times of stress, when children are afraid, they stop identifying with themselves as the helpless child and instead identify with the verbally or physically punishing parent. The parent is assimilated or taken in as he or she is at that moment, when he or she is at his or her worst, not as he or she is every day. The child tends to take on the anger, fear, self-hatred, in fact, the whole complex of emotions the parent is experiencing at that time.

And so, due to very human – hence very fallible – upbringings, we have all been subjected to situations and times in which we were made to feel like we were somehow bad, inadequate, or desperately needing to prove otherwise. Robert Firestone’s most recent work, Overcoming the Destructive Inner Voice – True Stories of Therapy and Transformation, is a book of short stories in which he relates various therapeutic experiences from his career. Self-loathing seems to be an underlying theme among many of these very personal narratives. Particularly the chapter entitled The Uninvited, in which Dr. Firestone is a student in psychology at Denver University when an old friend drops in, almost catatonic, seeking help. In fiercely funny and sharply intelligent prose Dr. Firestone describes this young man’s struggle, set against the rich backdrop of his own personal circumstances.

The Self-Loathing Thought Process is Not your Conscience

Often the process that underlies self-loathing, the critical inner voice or internal coach, seems as though it might just be your conscience. For instance, it may tell you about things you are doing that are not in your interest, just like your conscience does. But this process is diametrically opposed to your self-interest. Whereas your conscience will tell you not to have that one drink too many, this process first lures you into taking that drink and then attacks you viciously for having taken it. Your conscience may nag at you to revisit a conversation in which you may have not been kind for instance, and from there you can think about it and decide what you would like to do. The internal enemy either justifies your having been rude by attacking the other person, He deserved it, he is such a jerk! or berates you furiously for your part, You are always so touchy and mean. No wonder no one likes you!

How to Overcome Self-Loathing

No matter what circumstances you find yourself in, a nasty point of view toward yourself is never warranted. It is never in your self-interest. The proper viewpoint toward yourself should be one of friendship. Think about yourself and treat yourself as you would a close friend; respectfully and with affection. With understanding and empathy. And maybe most importantly, with a sense of easiness and humor.

You are powerful in your own right, free to choose any point of view or course of action available to you. Any inner voice that defines you, either tearing you down, You are such an idiot! or building you up, You’re the smartest one in this school! is attempting to take away your power and freedom. You must be your own advocate, taking your own side in your life.

There are many avenues through which to address the issue of self-loathing. First, just by becoming aware that a division exists within us allows for a more rational, reasonable assessment of events in our daily lives. Once we have identified this process as being different from honest self-reflection, we are then able to think more objectively about ourselves and the various situations we encounter. Further, there are a variety of therapy techniques geared toward helping people to address the negative ways of viewing themselves that lead to self-loathing.

Challenging the tendency toward self-loathing is one of the most valuable uses of our time and energy. As we extricate ourselves from this inimical process, we become freer to experience ourselves and the lives we are living from a kindly and empowered perspective.

Source: PSYCHALIVE https://www.psychalive.org/self-loathing/

This Election Will End. The Mental Damage May Not

Americans unnerved by the 2016 campaign may need help dealing with its consequences.

Deena Shanker @deenashanker

November 4, 2016 — 3:00 AM PDT

Guests attend a watch party for the last presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton at a bar in Washington D.C.

Photographer: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call

More than half of Americans are experiencing election-related stress comparable to that often attributed to work, money, or the economy, the American Psychological Association has said. And while the good news is the presidential contest will end next week, the bad news is that because of the ferocity of the campaign, the mental damage may linger. And for some groups, it may get even worse—depending on who wins.

There’s always disillusionment and anger when a presidential candidate loses. George W. Bush’s narrow victory over John Kerry in 2004 inflamed Democrats still angry over Bush’s first election, via the U.S. Supreme Court, four years earlier. That 5-4 ruling doomed the candidacy of Democratic Vice President Al Gore, capping what was arguably the most tempestuous U.S. presidential election in modern times. Until now

The hope is that once this election is over, and the constant barrage of negativity via television, radio, and mobile phone ends, things may return to some semblance of normal. But not everyone is so optimistic.

“There’s going to be tremendous alienation by all the people who lose on Nov. 9,” said Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. In the event of a Donald Trump victory, many Hispanics, blacks, and Muslims are likely to see his election as a popular affirmation of the Republican’s most negative characterizations of each group during the course of the campaign.

“It’s a sampling of human opinion, how we vote,” Humphreys said. So for Mexican Americans, he explained, a Republican victory would put a national imprimatur on Trump’s statement, during a speech launching his campaign, that immigrants coming to the U.S. from Mexico are rapists and drug dealers.

More than half of the Hispanic community reported experiencing election-related stress in the survey by the APA last month. For undocumented immigrants, those fears are likely to be even more acute, said Susan Macios, director of the Family Counseling Clinic at the Hispanic Family Center of Southern New Jersey in Camden, N.J. “Our Mexican population has been expressing anxiety about deportation,” she said, adding that a Trump victory could send many of them into hiding.

Protestors surround a Trump supporter on S. Almaden Boulevard outside the San Jose Convention Center as Presidential candidate Donald Trump holds a rally in San Jose, Calif., Thursday, June 6, 2016. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

The “election cycle has unleashed negativity and somehow given license to be mean and hateful. It has left deep scars on our society,” says Farha Abbasi, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University and the managing editor for Journal of Muslim Mental Health. Verbal and physical attacks on Muslims, and even on people mistaken for Muslims, have caused mental trauma for an entire segment of American citizenry, she said.

A report from Georgetown University (PDF) found that hate crimes against Muslims have spiked over the course of the presidential election. “We’re not imagining it,” Abbasi said. “It’s happening.”

Anxieties run deep as people of all ages and levels of religious observance find their loyalties being questioned, she said, pointing to the unvarnished bigotry triggered in some quarters by Trump’s candidacy. “Even in a really highly educated environment, there are comments that make people uneasy,” said Abbasi. No matter who wins, she says, that bell cannot be un-rung.

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A victory by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, shouldn’t be mistaken for a quick fix of the stress and doubt suffered by minority groups in this campaign. “Whenever Bill Clinton talks about how Muslims have to cooperate in countering extremism, it says that there is something inherently wrong with Muslims,” Abbasi said. “Just because I’m Muslim doesn’t put extra responsibility on me.”

Even in very pro-Trump parts of rural America, where mental healthcare is usually hard to come by, the Republican’s words have struck a particularly painful chord for victims of sexual assault. Sallie Richards, a clinical psychologist at Rural Mental Health Associates Inc. in Oil City, Penn., said “all of the statements, and the debates, and the ads that continue to play the audio clips of him speaking in a sexually assaultive manner, brought up past things that never came up in therapy before.” While she treats mostly women, the men she sees, Richards says, aren’t experiencing that same kind of personalized stress. “They’re just worried about what their future is going to be like,” she says, “a lot of ‘nothing good is going to come of this.’” She mentions issues like the Affordable Care Act, abortion and gun rights as concerns.If Trump loses, it may take a psychological toll on his most fervent supporters, exacerbating feelings of grievance and alienation among many whites who flocked to him, said Humphreys, whose work has focused on remote areas of West Virginia, his own home state. “If Trump loses, they will feel like, ‘I’ve been thrown away,’” he said.

Richards agreed. “If Hillary takes the presidency, there’s going to be a lot of anger, frustration, and fear,” she said.

For both sides, at least the uncertainty—barring a 2000-like finish—will be gone come Nov. 9. Whoever wins, Lynn Bufka, associate executive director of practice research at the APA, said “there will be some degree of relief because of the onslaught of negative campaigning for both federal and local elections will presumably disappear.”

“Uncertainty is stressful,” said William Eaton, a professor of mental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “There will be a large proportion of the population that will be relieved that it’s over.”

Mental Health Treatment Is A Privilege Many People Can’t Afford

Minaa B LMSW, Founder of Respect Your Struggle

I previously shared my truth about my battle with depression and self-injury in a piece I wrote titled “An Open Letter to Black Women About Mental Health.” Not only did I openly share my experiences with depression, but I urged other black women to break away from the cultural stigma surrounding mental illness, to rid themselves of the weight that comes with carrying the “strong black woman” title and to seek professional treatment for their struggles.

I took some time out to re-read my letter, and I realized that there is a fundamental piece that was missing. When I wrote it, I felt as if I were hitting the nail on the head, but I wasn’t focused on the foundation that nail was going into. If I am going to address a community to seek professional help, I need to address those who drive the mental health care system to understand how to tend to — as well as make themselves available to — this particular community.

There are so many folks living behind the looking glass who fail to recognize or comprehend the contemporary social problems that people from minority backgrounds encounter just for being human — racism, prejudice, discrimination, criminalization and deep-seated cultural stereotypes, to name a few. These collective societal issues are just as detrimental to our well-being as the “strong black woman” supposition, and such matters are linked to the prevalence of mental illness, particularly trauma, within minority and African-American communities.

As a woman who identifies as African-American and was once diagnosed with severe depression, I experienced several personal barriers to treatment not solely due to shame and stigma, but also due to my lack of knowledge around mental health, the lack of African-American treatment providers within the mental health scope, and most importantly, the cost of mental health services. Studies show that African-American patients are more likely to pursue African-American providers, as their commonality in regards to race helps to create a therapeutic relationship where the client feels accepted and understood, and the provider is more attune to culturally sensitive issues. This cultural match between patient and provider also leads towards a greater outcome for the development and successful completion of treatment goals and greater interactive sessions.

With regards to how race may enhance the therapeutic relationship between African-American patients and providers, there is still a dichotomy between the number of available African-American providers and those who seek treatment. Reported studies found that “black professionals make up only 2.6% of mental health clinicians in the United States, which is low considering that approximately 20% of black Americans seek mental health specialty treatment within a 12-month period.” While access to culturally diverse providers is low, the cost of mental health treatment remains high, which serves as an additional impediment to bridging the gap between the onset of symptoms and accessing professional care.

Studies show that nearly one-fourth of African Americans are uninsured, a percentage 1.5 times greater than the white rate. The average private provider (clinical social workers, psychiatrist, and psychologist) charges between $60-$300 per 45-minute session and works primarily out-of-network. Furthermore, providers typically recommend or mandate weekly sessions to ensure a rapport is continuously being built and so that they can better examine whether the services are proving to be effective for the client. On a monthly basis, mental health treatment alone can accrue an out-of-pocket cost between $120-$1,200.

Within the U.S, of the 34 million people who identify themselves as African-American, 22% live in poverty. African-Americans living below poverty are two to three times more likely to report serious psychological distress than those living above poverty. These individuals face a higher risk for developing mental disorders not solely because of their overrepresentation within the homeless population, but also due to other factors such as higher incarceration rates — African-Americans account for 60 percent of the prison population — and other systems in which they are represented in greater numbers than whites, such as foster care, welfare and an increased exposure to violent crimes.

When a private practitioner sets a rate for $200 for a therapy session, it is easily discernible who his or her target clientele will be. Yes, therapy can serve as a healthy outlet to processing emotions and thus, requires extreme care and attention to the needs of others, but it also takes extreme vulnerability, and when it costs someone that much to be vulnerable, it is simply a privilege that most people in need of mental health services cannot afford.

Providing culturally responsive treatment requires not just being aware of one’s biases and judgments or negative attitudes towards race and cultural stereotypes, but also knowing and understanding the individuals who need access to treatment and choosing to make yourself available to address the needs of those who may come from oppressed or marginalized groups by providing affordable care.

There is also a greater need to increase diversity among mental health providers. Training more African-American mental health workers may decrease the mental health gap correlated to stigma and lack of educational awareness, but this would also require getting to the core of the inadequate educational opportunities available for African-Americans along with the low college acceptance rates and the cost of tuition, which serves as barriers to gaining professional opportunities.

As a social worker myself, I got into this field knowing that this is not a lucrative venture, and I believe there should not be a monetary value placed on the quality of care that an individual receives based on their socio-economical and racial background. The health care system was built to serve the underserved and examine social injustice, yet there are still barriers set in place for those this system was designed for.

As much as I strongly encourage black women (and also black men) to seek professional care and to not be ashamed to be in need of help, I equally strongly ask and encourage the systems at play to provide greater access to the professional care that we need. If we are going to hit the nail on the head, lets make sure it’s not going directly into the coffin.

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If you — or someone you know — need help, please call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. If you are outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of international resources.

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