Mental health
‘Composting Our Emotions’: How Climate Action Cultivates Well-Being
Marinel Ubaldo freezes when she hears heavy rain or intense wind.
“My brain just cannot function,” says Ubaldo, a climate activist who is studying for her master’s degree in environmental management at Duke University in North Carolina. “It triggers my trauma, and all the memories from the past just come rushing to me.”
A decade ago, when Ubaldo was in her last year of high school, her village in the Philippines was hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan. The community on the Pacific-facing shore had experienced many typhoons. Through Ubaldo’s childhood, prepping her family’s oceanfront home for storms was a regular part of life. As Haiyan approached, Ubaldo expected the same storm routine. But this typhoon with winds that reached 195 mph was equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane — much stronger than the storms the community was used to.
Maribel Ubaldo, a climate activist pursuing a master’s degree in environmental management at Duke University in North Carolina. Credit: Marinel Ubaldo
From an evacuation center in the building where she’d attended day care, she watched the storm devastate the town. The gymnasium roof floated in the wind like paper, she recalls. A wave washed a baby from the mother’s arms. Her family’s home was destroyed. And in the days after, before outside aid reached them, she and other members of her community just tried to survive.
For Ubaldo, the storm didn’t just leave her with traumatic memories. It also deepened her anxiety about the impacts of climate change, a feeling she says is common among her peers. “It’s overwhelming that you don’t know if you have a future,” Ubaldo says. “You don’t know if your family will still be there next month … because our future is so unpredictable because of climate change.”
As the Earth’s climate alters, regions around the world are facing more intense storms, wildfires, floods, extreme heat, and other phenomena. Less visibly, the multilayered effects of the climate crisis have huge implications for mental health. In a number of surveys, people say climate change causes them stress, worry, or fear. And many, like Ubaldo, are already dealing with anxious feelings and trauma from its impacts today.
Decades of research on the effects of the changing climate have most often focused on the environment. But in 2022, for the first time, an assessment report published by the United Nations’ climate change science arm highlighted the impact of environmental changes on mental health and well-being.
These impacts come with a significant price. Researchers estimate that mental health effects related to climate change will have a total societal cost of $23 billion in 2030, and rise to $245 billion by 2050. “Fundamentally we need to make sure the costs of climate change on mental health are accounted for, and the benefits of climate action to mental health are accounted for and responded to,” says Emma Lawrance, who leads the Climate Cares Centre at the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.
Climate change affects mental health in a range of ways, according to Lawrance, who is helping to lead a global research project, Connecting Climate Minds, that has involved more than 500 people across some 80 countries. Natural disasters can directly affect people’s well-being, as can longer-term shifts like rising sea levels, changing weather patterns, coastal erosion and salinization. These phenomena can lead to loss of livelihoods, migration from home communities, food and water insecurity, and the deaths of loved ones, Lawrance explains. “Understandably, that can be a trauma and an ongoing stress that can lead to, sadly, more cases of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance misuse and even death by suicide,” she says.
Finn Does (front right) and others at the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York in September 2023. Credit: Finn Does
Research is finding links between these climate-related changes and people’s mental well-being, particularly with extreme heat. A study found that for every one degree Celsius rise in monthly average temperature, suicide rates increased by 0.7 percent in U.S. counties and 2.1 percent in Mexican municipalities. The researchers estimate that by 2050, rising temperatures could lead to between 9,000 and 40,000 additional suicides in the two countries. High temperatures also may raise risks for people who already have mental health challenges. During a 2021 heat wave in British Columbia, eight percent of people who died had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, while only one percent of the province’s general population has the condition.
There are physical effects of climate change, too, which in turn can have implications for mental well-being. During his career in cardiology, Bob Dewey saw more patients with chronic lung disease come into his office in New Hampshire in warm months when pollen counts were high. Over recent decades, climate change has resulted in longer pollen allergy seasons. These underlying health conditions are connected to mental well-being, says Dewey. “When you have trouble breathing it’s very easy to panic,” he says. “It’s just an extremely scary thing to know that you’re vulnerable to this kind of situation.”
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In general, environmental changes are compounding issues faced by people who are more vulnerable. “Climate change is essentially a risk multiplier,” Lawrance says.
Meanwhile, stress and anxiety about the climate — often called eco-anxiety or climate distress — are taking a toll on some. In a study that surveyed 10,000 young people in 10 countries, 45 percent said that feelings about climate change “negatively affected their daily life and functioning.” According to Google, English-language searches related to “climate anxiety” were 27 times higher in the first 10 months of 2023 compared with the same period six years earlier.
Distress about the environment and climate is not necessarily a mental health condition on its own, according to Lawrance. “But it can be an ongoing stressor that without support can worsen people’s mental well-being, disrupt their sleep, disrupt their daily life.”
Finn Does used to feel paralyzed by bad news about the climate crisis. The San Francisco Bay Area 18-year-old says he often read headlines and saw social media posts about environmental disasters and alarming studies. “I was caught in this whirlpool of all this news about climate change and the climate crisis,” he says.
Finn Does (center), summit co-chair, and other youth participants at the 2023 Bay Area Youth Climate Summit in San Francisco, California. Credit: Finn Does
For Does, anxiety around climate change led to feelings of despair, guilt, grief, hopelessness and fear. Then one day, as wildfires blazed in California, the sky in the Bay Area turned orange. The scene was “apocalyptic,” he recalls. He describes that day as a wake-up call that spurred him to take action. “I was just thinking about, ‘Wow, I have a whole life ahead of me,’” Does says. “If this is happening right now at such a young age, what’s going to be happening to me 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now?”
Now a senior in high school, Does is co-chair of the Bay Area Youth Climate Summit, an environmental justice activism network. He’s also involved in a project researching emotions related to climate change among young people across California. Through his research and conversations with other young people, his impression is that those who aren’t involved in climate work seem to feel more isolated and pessimistic. Meanwhile, people who participate in climate action seem to feel a sense of community and connection. “They have an extreme amount of awareness about climate, which gives them a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety,” Does says. “At the same time, they have way more optimism and way more hope than those folks that aren’t involved in climate work.”
Along those lines, taking part in collective action related to the climate may help relieve eco-anxiety, suggests a study led by the Yale School of Public Health published in 2022. Robert Feder, a retired psychiatrist and member of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance and NH Healthcare Workers for Climate Action, says that for mental health professionals, treating eco-anxiety involves trying to help people strengthen their responses to stress. Alongside general tools for resilience — like eating well, exercising and mindfulness techniques — building up social connections is important, he says. Getting involved with climate work can help people find social supports and address stress linked to climate change. “Not just sitting and worrying about it and feeling distressed about it, but doing something about it is really the most helpful thing to deal with the anxiety that it causes,” says Feder.
Experts say climate action can take many different forms. Some people might enjoy demonstrating in the streets, but others may find environmentally minded groups that suit their particular interests.
Finn Does (fifth from left) and others at the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York in September 2023. Credit: Finn Does
When the Rotary Club of Orléans, Ontario, launched a project in 2023 to work with high school students to plant 1,000 trees outside of Ottawa, part of the goal was to create an opportunity for young people to address feelings of eco-anxiety by engaging with the environment, according to Phil McNeely, who chairs the club’s environmental sustainability committee. One rainy day in May 2023, 70 teenagers came out to plant trees on farmland. Based on this initiative, the club is now working with other local Rotary clubs to create the Ottawa Rotary Youth Forest, a reforestation project that will involve students from area schools in planting and caring for trees. “They’ll get an outlet, I think, for their frustrations about climate change,” says McNeely.
There are also groups that convene specifically with the aim of talking about emotions related to the climate crisis. Does, for instance, has led “climate cafes.” These facilitated conversations create an opening for people to discuss their feelings about climate change’s threats to the world, says Wendy Greenspun, a New York City-based psychologist and a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance North America, who leads climate cafe trainings. “People often feel quite isolated. It’s not a topic that we often think of bringing up at a dinner party,” Greenspun says. “So creating a space that’s outside of our usual hustle and bustle and ways of being social in itself already provides something.”
Members of the Rotary Club of Orléans, Ontario, Canada, initiated a project with high school students to plant 1,000 trees. Credit: Dorothy Berthelet
For some people, group discussions may not be enough support — Greenspun and other psychologists also treat people who benefit from individual therapy. But for many, she says, the group setting provides an avenue to air negative emotions. Through the process people begin to feel validated and less alone. “I call it composting our emotions,” says Greenspun. “New feelings can start to emerge and grow, like a sense of excitement that ‘maybe I can do something,’ a sense of deep meaning and connection with others, a sense of solidarity, a sense of courage.”
Approaches to help people, particularly young people, cope with climate distress are growing around the world. For instance, SustyVibes, an organization based in Nigeria, is creating online and in-person opportunities to discuss eco-anxiety among Africans. The Good Grief Network, based in the US, focuses on building resilience. The UK-based Resilience Project trains leaders of “resilience circles” where peers can support each other. The Climate Cares Centre, which Lawrance leads, launched a guided journal to help young people manage eco-anxiety and transform negative feelings into positive actions.
But climate action doesn’t completely address the mental health burden. Among young activists, there’s a risk of burnout. And while young people are increasingly discussing these climate-related emotions among themselves, there’s also a need for older people to support young people experiencing eco-anxiety, Lawrance says. “We see a big need to equip teachers and parents and train medical professionals and mental health professionals so they’re validating these experiences of distress,” she says.
Meanwhile, many communities are already dealing with the effects of climate change — including on mental health.
In the Philippines, Ubaldo sees the influence it has on her peers, many of whom worry for the safety of themselves and their families and question whether they want to have children because of the changing environment. The Philippines is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change. In a survey of young people in 10 countries, Filipinos reported the highest levels of climate anxiety.
High schoolers in Orléans, Ontario work on a tree-planting project. Credit: Dorothy Berthelet
Reducing stigma around mental health and increasing access to services is important to support communities hurt by climate disasters, Ubaldo says. Incorporating mental health into disaster response could help people talk about their feelings and move forward. “We have to ensure that these experiences are processed or addressed before we experience another super typhoon, because it really adds to our capacity if we know that what we are experiencing or what we are feeling is valid,” she says.
Ubaldo is a registered social worker in the Philippines, and as a volunteer, she’s worked with people who have experienced disasters. But she says there’s a need for government support of such relief services and for more capacity to manage the mental health effects of a climate-related disaster. “I know that there is a great need from the conversations that I have with the community members whenever I’m doing a debriefing after a disaster,” Ubaldo says.
Around the world, initiatives are working to build up mental health treatment services in regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Rotary members in southeastern Australia, for example, helped start Trauma Recovery Network Australia to train health care professionals in rural areas so that communities are better positioned to counter possible mental health harms of disasters. “For mental health, you need people there, and continuously,” says Pam Brown, a psychologist and a member of the Rotary Club of Gisborne who led the creation of the network.
The initiative, which began in 2020, holds workshops in regions hit by wildfires. Often areas that are vulnerable to fires are also susceptible to other climate change impacts, like coastal erosion or weather changes that affect farming. In rural areas, mental health professionals may have fewer opportunities for trauma treatment training, and community members don’t have easy access to local support, Brown explains.
After bushfires in 2019 and 2020, the Australian network began training groups of social workers, psychologists, counselors, and other mental health experts on how to treat people using a technique called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. In the treatment, people bring up a traumatic memory while simultaneously engaging in “bilateral stimulation,” something like shifting their eyes from one side to the other or tapping their hands in an alternating pattern. The approach has been endorsed as a treatment for trauma by the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, and the Australian Psychological Society, among others. Studies find that the treatment reduces symptoms of PTSD and other distress among survivors of disasters including earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.
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Meanwhile, the mental health reverberations of Australia’s bushfires linger. A survey of people affected by the fires 12 to 18 months later found high levels of distress, including anxiety and depression. Over 60 percent of the nearly 100 mental health professionals who participated in the Trauma Recovery Network Australia trainings have completed the requirements needed to join the national association for practitioners of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and even more have used the treatment in their practice, Brown says. “It’s helping therapists not feel so helpless,” she says.
Supporting mental health in the face of climate change is not only about responding. Building psychological resilience can also be incorporated into climate adaptation efforts, Lawrance says. Strengthening social connections and being prepared for climate events can buffer against mental health strains. “We know that when a disaster hits, the communities that have stronger social bonds tend to be the ones who are less affected psychologically and more able to respond practically than those that have weaker social ties,” Lawrance says.
As the connection between mental health and climate comes into the spotlight, one of the challenges is understanding the full extent of this intersection. Data is hard to gather because there are so many ways that climate could intertwine with well-being. But research is growing, as are approaches to supporting mental health against climate change stressors. “There are these vicious cycles of compounding challenges, but it also means that there are compounding opportunities when we take action,” Lawrance says. “There is a brighter future to be working toward that is better for the climate and also better for our minds.”
This story is a collaboration between Rotary magazine and Reasons to be Cheerful.
The post ‘Composting Our Emotions’: How Climate Action Cultivates Well-Being appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
Addicted to Philosophy
“I was trapped in the feeling that philosophy was all important and that anything and everything—including my well being—can be sacrificed for it. This is the core of my addiction to philosophy. I couldn’t stop doing philosophy.”
Those are the words of Bharath Vallabha, a former assistant professor of philosophy at Bryn Mawr.
In a post at his blog, The Radiant Path, Dr. Vallabha talks about what he calls his “addiction” to philosophy, and how it affected his life.
Here’s an excerpt:
My philosophy education helped me grow and open my horizons. Sure, academic philosophy has problems, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Of course, it is good!
But what I felt I couldn’t say when I was an academic was, “I know philosophy is good, but I seem to be addicted to it.” I was depending on philosophy to submerge personal pain and trauma, and the very thing – philosophy – which helped me personally and which is important socially was also the thing which was blocking aspects of my personal growth given how I was depending on it.
I wasn’t just being a philosopher in the grand, mythical sense of Socrates, Plato, Kant and Russell. I was also snorting philosophy – using it as a numbing device to push away personal pain and insecurity. I was using my identity as an academic philosopher to convince myself and others I was thinking critically about life in general, when in fact I was also using philosophy the way one might use ice cream or alcohol or drugs – as a way to escape into a fantasy world in which the euphoria and the high of a good argument, or the thrill of intellectual combat became substitutes for taking care of myself physically and emotionally.
The more I was drawn into philosophy, the less I exercised. The more captivated I became with the importance of philosophy, I more told myself I don’t need relationships – that I don’t have time for a girlfriend or to relax with friends. The more I was drawn into philosophy, the more I lived into a world in which my main friends were the great authors I read and with whom I identified. Wittgenstein came to seem to me more real as a friend than any living person next to me. When I was fixated on Kant’s racism, Kant seemed to me more real as someone to be “defeated” than anybody still alive.
This is a familiar issue in our world of celebrity, social media and isolation. For many people the celebrities they admire feel more real and more of their friend than people they see everyday. An opponent on X or Facebook comes to seem the epitome of what all is wrong with the world, and who has to be put in their place. The continual paradox for me as an academic philosopher was the more I entered into academic philosophy, the more I felt isolated. And the more isolated I felt, the more I depended on the celebrities of academic philosophy – the great thinkers of the past and the prominent members of the current time who I didn’t really know – to be my sense of community. Something was off. As I went from being an undergrad to graduate student to being a professor, I didn’t feel I was entering into a world of real people and cultivating living relationships with those around me. It felt instead like the more I entered academic philosophy, the more I was drifting into a parallel, fantasy world in which I felt disconnected from my students and colleagues, and where I was hanging out more with Wittgenstein and Kant in my mind.
It is easy to miss this, or not take it seriously, because all academic philosophers necessarily have deep relations with the philosophers, dead and alive, with whom they engage. One can’t be a Kant scholar without in some sense living with Kant in one’s head. Academic disagreements are also personal in some sense. The disagreement between defenders of Fodor and Wittgenstein can have the flavor of a battle between the Montagues and the Capulets. For people devoted to a life of ideas, the boundaries between ideas and emotions are often blurred and not easily demarcated.
But it’s one thing for the boundaries to be blurred, and another for them to be completely erased. And that is how it became for me. Philosophy wasn’t just an activity or a job – it became my whole life…
I was trapped in the feeling that philosophy was all important and that anything and everything – including my well being – can be sacrificed for it.
This is the core of my addiction to philosophy. I couldn’t stop doing philosophy. After I left academia, the addiction grew deeper and more frenzied, mixed as it was now with a sense of frightened anxiety that perhaps I made a mistake in leaving. I pushed my wife away who had to bear the brunt of my addiction to philosophy, and we almost got divorced. I assumed I couldn’t have time to be a parent because I was afraid of the mundane life that might imply – and which I felt I couldn’t really function in. I told myself I couldn’t be a parent because I need time to focus on my philosophy. But behind the issue of time was the deeper issue that I was afraid of entering again into the normal social relations that parenthood involves. I had built philosophy as a bubble between myself and those around me, and I didn’t know how to step out of it.
I don’t think Vallabha is unique in feeling something like an addiction to philosophy, nor in letting such feelings impact the rest of one’s life.
Such feelings may prompt questions: What should I do? To whom can I talk about this? What help is available? How will other philosophers react?
Vallabha says:
I wish when I was in academic I could have recognized my addiction to philosophy as an addiction and sought help. But even if I had recognized that my particular dependence on philosophy was an addiction, where could I turned to for help? Who in academic philosophy could I have turned to for help?… I felt it was my own personal problem if I am addicted to philosophy, that I need to deal with it on my own…
It would be good if it didn’t have to be this way. If it could be talked about how addiction to philosophy is fairly common. I suspect many of the “idiosyncracies” of philosophy professors would be better understood if they are seen in the light of addiction to philosophy.
You can read the full post here.
Discussion welcome.
The post Addicted to Philosophy first appeared on Daily Nous.
ScoMo Reveals Painful Battle With Endometriosis In His New Book
Former Australian Prime Minister (yep, really), Scott Morrison, has written in his new book about his painful battle with the disease endometriosis. Mr Morrison, or ScoMo, as he prefers to be referred to, revealed that he believed that he had the disease and was about to seek treatment before his wife explained to him what endometriosis was exactly.
”Jen has an amazing way of clarifying things,” said former PM ScoMo. ”Here I was a big boofy Dad, thinking I had the old endo then Jen comes along and clears things up, buy my book.”
”Sorry, didn’t mean to lead in with the old shameless plug there but seriously buy the bloody book.”
When asked what else his new tome will reveal the former PM was coy, saying: ”Give me $30 and I’ll tell you all about it.”
”Seriously though, the book will be manna from heaven, some are even calling it the new and updated testament.”
”So, go out there and as Peter Costello used to say, buy one for Mum, one for Dad and one from the country.”
”Oh, also I will be doing an exclusive signing of my book next Saturday night after the Sharkies game at Engadine Maccas.”
Mark Williamson
@MWChatShow
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‘Neglected, Exhausted and Exploited’: A Mum’s Story of Caring for her Disabled Daughter 24 Hours a Day
I am a parent carer to a 21-year-old who is non-verbal, has complex medical needs, and is severely disabled. While I fight a system that creates too many challenges and expects too much from those who provide care to loved ones, I am also battling heart failure.
I was born with congenital heart disease and was fitted with my first pacemaker following the birth of my daughter, Francesca. Caring for her, and the lack of sleep that entails, my cardiologist believes caused me to suffer a pulmonary oedema, a condition in which fluid builds up in the lungs, making it difficult to breathe, in 2022.
Before becoming a parent, I worked as cabin crew, which allowed me to explore the world. My daughter's increasing dependence, and my forever-expanding role as her carer, now means I barely get away at all.
Holidays, having a meal with friends, being able to attend my medical appointments, or even getting a good night's sleep aren't guaranteed.
Many unpaid carers are left to look after their relative in excess of 90 hours a week – more than twice the length, 36.7 hours, of the average working week for Brits.
To receive carers allowance, you must provide at least 35 hours per week, but there is no limit to the amount of hours you might do. The allowance – when applied to a 90-hour-week – works out at less than £1 an hour.
Unlike for those employed in carer roles, there are no working time regulations and so no protections. No breaks, annual leave, sick leave, or uninterrupted rest periods. We are expected to carry on, day after day, with little or no sleep. That's why many carers don’t need alarm clocks – because their shifts never end.
In any other context, this would never be tolerated.
Some carers may be lucky enough to catch a break, but it is not guaranteed, and many are left begging and having to justify their need to get time off, over and again. Imagine having to do this simply to attend medical appointments, do the weekly shop, or get some fresh air.
Even if you're lucky enough to get respite, it can be cancelled at short notice because of a shortage of skilled and reliable carers in the social care system. Often, any time off is spent filling out the latest form or appeal, to justify the need for equipment or funding.
The crisis in the social care system is leaving unpaid carers not only overworked, but picking up every broken piece of a system that just doesn't work. It is simply not fair.
My own experiences – particularly when in hospital with my daughter – have meant that I have had to ask someone to help when I need to go to the toilet, have a shower, or go and get food as her difficulties mean that she can't be left alone. I am 47 years old, yet I'm having to seek permission to do the simplest of things.
There should be no expectation that people in caring roles should remain on the job 24 hours a day and be denied the ability to do things that a paid employee – such as a nurse or support worker – would do. Basic things: like eat, sleep, use the bathroom, and have time off.
Many unpaid carers are being left in this situation, whether it is at home or while they are in hospital with their relative. We are human beings and we have the same needs as everyone else.
Expecting unpaid carers to work continuous shifts is also a health and safety risk as we are both their driver and nurse, administering medications, often on no sleep. This is accepted, as it saves the Government money.
As a consequence of their stay-at-home role, many unpaid carers have to give up their careers and, along with them, their salaries and pensions. Instead, they receive an allowance of £81.90 per week – £11.70 a day. Divided by the minimum of 35 hours of care required a week to qualify, the payment equates to £2.34 an hour.
Broken down further, for the 47% of unpaid carers doing 90 hours care a week and it's 0.91p an hour. Some unpaid carers, depending on the number of hours they care per week, can earn on top of their allowance – but even this is restricted by the Government to £151 per week.
On average, disabled households need an additional £975 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households. Eighty-odd pounds isn't enough, and restricting what someone can earn beyond that is cruel. Many carers are being pushed into poverty, left reliant on food banks, fundraising and grants.
The amount of hours a week unpaid carers are expected to do – or more accurately, left to do – would normally be covered by a team of carers, not just one person.
Unpaid carers are not 'unsung heroes’ or 'volunteers’, as the Government likes to call them. They are neglected, exhausted, human beings who are being exploited.
Something needs to change, both in terms of the hours we are expected to care, and the amount we receive for the sacrifice and commitment we make for our loved ones. Enough is enough.
Book Release: “Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide”
I’m pleased to make note here of the release, on March 19th, of my book Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide published by Princeton University Press. Here is the book’s description and cover:
- Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn’t always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by ancient and modern philosophies—Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life—and how philosophy has helped him cope with it.
- Chopra shows that many philosophers—including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger—have viewed anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious.
- Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight.
‘Mental Health is the Elephant in the Room When It Comes to Prioritising Economic Growth’
Despite mental health being arguably the most significant health crisis facing the UK, Jeremy Hunt didn't mention it once during his Spring Budget.
One in four people in the UK are affected by mental health, with mental illness costing the country an estimated £118 billion annually – equivalent to 5% of GDP.
According to NHS data, the number of people in contact with mental health services has increased by almost 500,000 since 2020.
For these reasons, mental health charities did not welcome the Budget.
Mind was particularly critical of the decision not to commit more funding to the roll-out of 'Right Care, Right Person’, an initiative that aims to ensure that the right agency deals with health-related calls, rather than police forces being the default first responders.
"It is simply impossible to take a million hours of support out of the system without replacing it with investment," the charity said. "Failing to properly fund NHS mental health crisis services while instructing police forces to step back from mental health calls is an unsafe and frankly irresponsible decision."
Given that the NHS is facing extreme challenges in almost every aspect of its running, it does not have the capacity to handle the increasing number of people in the UK reaching crisis point with their mental health.
The Budget promised to deliver an NHS productivity plan, by making its technology more efficient and reducing healthcare time on admin. While this may ease time pressure for healthcare workers, it is not focused enough to address the broader, more systemic issue of underfunding and under-resourcing.
A recent British Medical Association report highlights an additional problem: mental health professionals are becoming so disillusioned that they are unable to work themselves. In September 2023, one in seven medical posts in NHS mental health trusts were vacant.
According to a report shared with The Independent on March 25, emergency departments are so overwhelmed, A&E staff are unable to look after the most vulnerable mental health patients or treat them with compassion. According to medical records, more than 40% of patients who needed emergency care due to self-harm or suicide attempts received no compassionate care, the newspaper reported.
It appears as if the Conservatives view our mental health crisis as a primarily financial burden, reprimanding the growing population of people out of work, many for mental ill-health.
The Autumn 2023 Budget, for example, announced the Government’s plan for short-term changes to how the Department for Work and Pensions classifies who is fit to work. It proposed stricter sanctions for people previously deemed unable to work, potentially pushing those who are too mentally unwell back into work to avoid losing access to support.
The driving force for these changes seems to be primarily one of labour, productivity, and money rather than addressing the underlying socio-economic factors such as, but not exclusively, racism, homelessness, poverty, and sexism.
People under 25 seem to bear the brunt of these pressures.
A week before Hunt's Budget, Young Minds delivered an open letter to the Chancellor, signed by 15,000 campaigners, urging the Government to invest in early intervention hubs for young people struggling with mental health.
Meanwhile, a new report published by the Children’s Commissioner showed that more than a quarter of a million children and young people are awaiting mental health support, and referrals for under-18s are up by 53%.
According to the Mental Health Foundation, 50% of mental health conditions emerge by the age of 15 and 75% by 24, so early intervention could help prevent severe mental health issues which may impact work and life quality into adulthood.
Responding the the Budget, Laura Bunt, chief executive at YoungMinds said, “Ultimately, until we focus on the systemic drivers of poor mental health, we will be fighting a broken system. We need a plan that works across Government, one that prioritises early intervention and prevention; we need this Government to wake up and take steps to stop this crisis from getting worse.”
The Government has also repeatedly fallen short on promises to deliver on mental health reform.
A previous commitment to a 10-year mental health plan to "level-up mental health across the country and put mental and physical health on an equal footing" was scrapped and absorbed into a ‘Major Conditions Strategy’. That aimed to tackle wider ill-health and removed the focus on mental health.
Recently announced National Insurance cuts will also do little to help those with low incomes, providing almost no support for those on the lowest threshold. Financial insecurity is a crucial indicator of poor mental health. Children from the poorest 20% of households in England are almost four times more likely to have serious mental health difficulties by age 11 than those from the wealthiest 20%.
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy at Disability Rights UK, told Byline Times that the Budget “totally ignored the deepening poverty and lack of support being experienced by millions of disabled people, including those experiencing mental distress".
"There are to be no further cost of living payments and the Household Support Fund, which enables councils to give discretionary payments, is only extended by six months,” she added.
The burgeoning mental health crisis is evident, with a high cost to the long-term productivity and growth the Conservative Party desires. Unless the Government prioritises mental health service funding and effective measures supporting the young and most vulnerable are in place, the crisis will only get worse.
What If Finding Affordable Housing Worked More Like Matchmaking?
Dozens of framed photographs and paintings on the walls in Gabrielle’s cozy one-bedroom apartment in Boyle Heights showcase her artistry and cherished memories from trips to New Zealand and Europe. Her favorite is a black and white portrait of a miner in New Zealand panning for gold.
Gabrielle (who is comfortable printing only her first name) feels she struck gold, too, when she moved into this light-filled apartment in September 2019. She calls the place — with an open kitchen, a large bathroom and a sweeping view over park greenery and palm trees to the snow-capped mountains outside of Los Angeles — her “safe haven,” after feeling unsafe for several years.
A professional gemologist whose family once had five jewelry stores in Hawaii, she had struggled with alcoholism and mental health issues, and a suicide attempt left her in a coma for five days. While she was recovering from major neck surgery and fighting to be granted disability, she was living in her car in Los Angeles for several months and in transitional housing for more than 15 months. She wondered if she would ever have an apartment again or “be stuck in a hell hole forever.”
A 2020 report found that Los Angeles had more than one vacant residential unit for every unhoused person. Credit: Ocean Image Photography / Shutterstock
Gabrielle’s luck began to change when a California nonprofit called Brilliant Corners got involved. She had qualified for help from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Housing for Health division that gives priority to vulnerable clients with health issues. (Gabrielle contributes 30 percent of her income to the rent, and the rest is covered by the program’s subsidy.) But when the Boyle Heights apartment in a former hospital opened up, the landlord didn’t want to rent to her because of her bad credit. The real estate specialists at Brilliant Corners worked with Gabrielle’s case manager at the local nonprofit Life Steps to convince the landlord he was not taking a big risk in accepting Gabrielle as a renter.
Brilliant Corners was founded in 2004 by several nonprofit service providers with the mission to find housing for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in three California counties. In 2014, it significantly expanded its mission to extremely low-income Californians and began operating the Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool, in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and private partners such as the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, as part of the Housing for Health initiative. The Flex Pool is a supportive housing rent subsidy program that helps match vulnerable individuals with available housing options.
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The key is its flexibility: “For one landlord, it was a dealbreaker that the applicant had $3,000 in debt. So we paid off half the debt,” says Kolby Vaughn, Brilliant Corners’ associate housing services director in San Diego, which has a Flex Pool that is funded by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness. “For another client, cooking was really important so we spoke with the landlord [to see] if we could put a hot plate in his unit. These are the kind of hurdles we can overcome outside of the bureaucratic process.”
With a budget of over $200 million, braiding state, local and private funding sources, Brilliant Corners has been able to make a significant impact. “We have developed the capacity to administer over $10 million of rent subsidies every month,” according to Brilliant Corners CEO Bill Pickel. To date, the nonprofit has placed nearly 13,000 unhoused people into permanent homes in Los Angeles, averaging about 200 people a month. Brilliant Corners contracts with government agencies, such as the L.A. County Department of Health Services or Veterans Affairs, other nonprofits and community partners, and pairs up with Intensive Case Management Services to help clients achieve and maintain health and housing stability.
Its initial efforts in L.A. focused on the most vulnerable clients who frequently used costly emergency services. This is how Brilliant Corners makes the case that it actually saves the county money. According to a 2017 Rand study that analyzed the first two and a half years of the program, every $1 invested in the program saved the county $1.20 in health care and other social service costs. The idea is that once clients have stable housing, they have a better foundation to address other issues including their physical and mental health.
Brilliant Corners housing coordinator Adriana Flores helped Brian Wearren get over housing hurdles. Credit: Morgan Soloski
“Clients are typically referred by a government agency or a local case management nonprofit,” Pickel explains, as was the case with Life Steps, the local nonprofit that helped Gabrielle. “We meet individuals one on one.” BC’s housing coordinators provide support from the initial contact all the way through. “They are sticking with one person and don’t leave them alone once they are in an apartment,” says Pickel. “Most folks need some level of ongoing support.”
NPR calls Brilliant Corners a “real estate agency for the unhoused,” because what distinguishes it from other housing programs is its dedicated team of landlord engagement specialists who build long-standing relationships with landlords so they know when a unit will become available. This strategy is considerably different from the normal bureaucratic process where overworked case managers need to find the time to canvas neighborhoods and rental portals for available apartments.
“Especially in California communities where the real estate market is so intense and vacancies are so limited, landlords have lots of choices and might go with someone who just landed a job at Google or Facebook,” Pickel notes. “How can low-income folks possibly compete in such a competitive market to secure a unit? We help put everything in place to match somebody with the unit.” Brilliant Corners sometimes enters into long-term agreements with landlords; these could include guaranteeing rent from day one even before the tenant moves in and assurances that rent is paid on time.
Manola Rodriguez, for instance, who owns and manages 50 apartment units in Antelope Valley with her husband, met Brilliant Corners representatives when they were canvassing the neighborhood in 2014. She has been renting half of her units to Brilliant Corners clients ever since. “We believe in second chances,” she says. “It’s very hard for people to function without a roof over their head.”
Despite its convincing model, Brilliant Corners has dozens of one-star reviews on online platforms where both clients and landlords complain that they have been unable to reach anybody at the nonprofit when problems arose, such as a rodent infestation or behavioral issues with mentally ill renters. But Rodriguez says that Brilliant Corners representatives were always there to assist with problems.
Brilliant Corners client Brian Wearren enjoys his apartment building’s rooftop. Courtesy of Brilliant Corners
To cut through even more red tape and avoid cumbersome bureaucracy, Brilliant Corners is currently developing five multifamily housing sites in L.A., totaling 376 units of permanent supportive housing. The nonprofit is also managing its own residential care homes.
The situation is particularly dire in Los Angeles County, which counted more than 75,500 unhoused people in 2023, an uptick of nine percent from 2022. The homeless number in the city has gone up 10 percent to 46,260, and more than 2,000 unhoused people died last year in the city amidst the housing and fentanyl crises, more than six deaths a day. The alarming death rate, too, rises significantly every year.
A Harvard study shows that low-rent units under $1,400 a month have disappeared fast across all states, particularly in California. “We’re rehousing people faster and more people. Even though the number of people we are able to house is rising, the number of people who need affordable housing is rising faster,” Pickel admits. “What comes to mind is the unfortunate image of bailing water out of a boat, but there’s more water coming in than we can bail out.”
On her first day in office in December 2022, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass signed an emergency declaration on homelessness, promising to cut red tape and fast-track affordable housing permits. Activists laud her efforts, but they are far from enough. “Billions are being spent. What are we doing wrong?” Pickel asks. “I think we have a multi-generational complex social problem that includes the failure to build enough housing at various income levels, including middle-income housing, workforce housing and deeply affordable housing. We also have a tragically fractured social safety net and an unfolding crisis of people in severe distress, whether it’s from mental health, substance abuse or so many other reasons. It is really hard to develop our way out of this problem. We would need something in the order of $10 to $12 billion a year. That’s a staggering number.”
Similarly, in San Diego, Kolby Vaughn says that more people end up unhoused for the first time than Brilliant Corners and other services can put in apartments. Many seniors are aging into homelessness because their pensions are not keeping up with housing prices. Since launching the San Diego Flex Pool in October 2020, Brilliant Corners has housed 900 individuals and families in need, with a focus on youth, veterans and those with complex health issues. But the need continues to mount: California needs 1.4 million more affordable rental units.
At the same time, studies also show that a significant percentage of high-rent housing is lying vacant, held for its value not as shelter, but for investment purposes. A 2020 report found that Los Angeles had more than one vacant residential unit for every unhoused person.
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This is where Brilliant Corners sees a lever to offer landlords incentives to rent to their clients by giving them assurances other nonprofits can’t. “We’re not building our way out of homelessness,” Brilliant Corners housing coordinator Adriana Flores says. She has experienced housing insecurity herself. “A lot of us have been in our clients’ shoes,” she says, and she calls what she offers them “a hand up, not a handout.”
Her client Brian Wearren is a success story. After being honorably discharged from the Navy and then having been incarcerated for 25 years for assault and robbery, Wearren faced some hurdles to finding housing: He had no rental history, no credit and no income. But he found himself a one-bedroom apartment in San Diego on the 12th floor with a view over the city. Brilliant Corners helped him pay for application fees and furniture, and Flores assured the landlord the rent was guaranteed with his VA (Veterans Affairs) rent voucher. Now he works two jobs as a plumber and a fiber optics cable installer and wants to pay it forward.
“I’m extremely lucky and had a lot of support, but not everybody is so lucky,” Wearren says. “I want to establish transitional housing for guys like me who come out of the military or out of incarceration.”
The post What If Finding Affordable Housing Worked More Like Matchmaking? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
Former MP Smith quits Labour after suspension for refusing to vote for cuts
Labour under control freak Starmer has no respect or inclusivity, says former Crewe and Nantwich MP Laura Smith, who also cites Starmer’s Gaza stance as a driver for her decision
Former Crewe and Nantwich MP Laura Smith has quit the Labour party with a blistering attack on Labour’s lack of standards and inclusivity under Keir Starmer, after being suspended from the Cheshire East council Labour group for refusing to vote in support of a package of swingeing Tory cuts.
In a public statement about her decision to resign, Smith said that she:
entered mainstream politics back in 2017 after years of activism in social justice
movements after growing up in a family of trade union and socialist values. I stuffed
leaflets In the Labour Party envelopes and served tea and biscuits at the meetings of the local group as a child, and some of my earliest memories were of Saturdays spent In the car with my dad as he drove Gwyneth Dunwoody, the MP at the time around the constituency. I knew my core values from a very early age and I knew from the feeling in the pit of my stomach that my fight was always going to be equality and social justice. I experienced many things growing up that further shaped my beliefs and that feeling only grew as I became an adult.Being supported by my local Labour party and then becoming an MP representing my home towns was something that I couldn’t ever have Imagined. As someone from a challenging background and always struggling to make ends meet, it wasn’t a future that I felt was possible. But it did happen In a whirlwind of political change and hope for an alternative in the snap general election of 2017. I was elevated into a position where I felt that I could make a difference and my motivation was always the same. Those same values that I had harboured since being a little girl.
That two and half years in Parliament was an experience that I will always cherish and struggle with, in equal measures. The stark reality of our political system is one that I cannot pretend hasn’t made me more cynical, less hopeful for a real alternative and unfortunately more worried for the future. When I was elected, I hoped that I could prove to young girls and women who had been just like me that their voices could be heard, that they could make a difference and that they could be the changemakers and creators of a better world. The sad reality is that the system itself hampers the opportunity for real progress.
I would love to say that politics is a safe space for women. It isn’t. I would desperately like to say that debate and conflict is healthy and respectful. It’s not. I wish I could say that the old tropes that politics is a dirty corrupt business were untrue. But sadly it is. And that is from the top of our system all the way down to local politics.
More than anything I would like to say that the Labour Party itself sets a standard of
inclusivity and respect but that would be untruthful in my experience. It has become a place where to have a thought in your head that differs to the Labour leadership and the officials behind the scenes is an offence that can lead to suspension or even expulsion. At a local level it is a space where judgment is felt because as a full-time working mother juggling multiple caring responsibilities as well as often working Saturdays, you can’t sit in meeting after meeting or knock on doors in your rare free hours. I have heard the tutting and watched the finger wagging and listened to the comments and I think that it unfortunately remains the case that to be valued in the party you need to have lots and lots of free time. Naturally that means being either retired, not have caring responsibilities, being healthy both physically and mentally, and more often then not financially secure. Equality right? This Is before even
touching on the factional aspects that rage through the party, manifesting Itself through bullying, belittling, a culture of fear and a general lack of respect.I am not perfect. I don’t have all of the answers. But one thing I am not is a hypocrite. It is for that reason, and after much consideration, I have decided to resign my membership of the UK Labour Party, rather than appeal my recent suspension letter by the local labour group at Cheshire East Council. I was suspended for not voting In line with the whip, but as I stated at the council meeting on the 27th of February I cannot support an austerity budget that places local councillors as the punching bag tor a Tory Government determined to destroy public services. This has not been an easy decision, but it is on balance the right one for me.
The reasons that I have stated combined with the position the Labour Party leadership is taking on international policy as well as domestic issues is now completely at odds with my personal beliefs and unfortunately, I feel that an alternative voice is no longer respected within the party structures. I would like to thank the great many friends that I have within the party who I hope will continue to value and respect me as I value and respect them. I will continue to serve my ward of Crewe South as an independent socialist councillor on the political values that I have always openly and honestly shared and was elected on.
I remain dedicated to fighting for true equality and Justice for the people in this country who quite simply are not receiving anywhere near the service and quality of life that they deserve. There is a complete void of honesty, decency, ambition and leadership from those with the true power to change things. Talk is cheap and the dishonesty that I have encountered on a daily basis in politics is something that I simply could not have imagined.
Bravery is required in desperate times, and democracy can only really work when fear and desire for power is not the driving force behind people’s motivations. It is our actions that define who we are and we owe it to ourselves to be true. I will be true to the little girl I once was and not allow my voice to be erased and my opinions silenced.
Smith was re-elected last year as councillor for Crewe South and will continue to serve, but as an independent.
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The Perks of Virtual Coworking With Strangers
From a young age, Alexis Haselberger’s son always asked someone to stick around when he needed to get chores or homework done. At first, she wondered why he needed help.
“Then I realized that he didn’t need me to engage with him, he just needed to know that my body was there,” says Haselberger, a time management and productivity coach in San Francisco.
Though they were not initially aware of it, Haselberger and her son were practicing “body doubling,” which involves having someone alongside to help you focus on a task. The term was first coined in the 1990s by a coach specializing in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Haselberger’s now-13-year-old son has not been diagnosed with ADHD, but he continues to find body doubling helpful. So does Haselberger, who does have ADHD. She asks her husband to be around while she completes certain tasks, and she organizes regular video calls with work peers to make progress on “important but not urgent” goals. They start by sharing objectives, then switch off cameras and focus for an hour.
Alexis Haselberger began practicing body doubling before she knew the term. Courtesy of Alexis Haselberger
Video calls like these are part of a growing trend: structured online sessions, in groups or in pairs, for anyone who wants to resist distractions and get things done.
In focus
The exact cause of ADHD, which affects an estimated five to eight percent of children globally and often continues into adulthood, is unknown. Among adults, it can create problems with time management, following instructions, and focusing or completing tasks. Although more commonly diagnosed in children, diagnoses are rising rapidly among adults in some countries, particularly among women.
Kirsty Baggs-Morgan, 50, who lives in Malta and runs a business supporting HR professionals, describes herself as “an absolute shocker” for delaying boring tasks until the last minute. For a while, she would ask her assistant to join her on a call when she needed to complete a task, “but we’d end up just chatting for the whole hour.”
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That changed with Baggs-Morgan’s ADHD diagnosis in August 2023. A coach recommended Flow Club, a company that hosts “virtual coworking sessions designed to drop you into productive flow.” As in Haselberger’s video calls, participants join a session and share their intentions, then get on with their work until the allotted time is up. In addition to multiple daily sessions, Flow Club users benefit from a supportive community — well over half of users are neurodivergent — and special features to aid focus, such as optional music and the choice of verbal or non-verbal sessions.
Already, Baggs-Morgan has racked up well over 130 Flow Club sessions — often while sitting in a physical coworking space. “For me it’s been an absolute game-changer,” she says. While the physical community provides real-life interaction, the online one helps her to get work done, and even to stick to a regular morning routine. “I like step-by-step instructions. I’ll actually do it because it’s written down,” she says, referring to the to-do list that every participant fills in at the start of a session. Other users might be doing anything from decluttering to writing a book — Baggs-Morgan even recalls someone using a session to take a nap.
Kirsty Baggs-Morgan often participates in online coworking sessions while also in a physical coworking space. Credit: Andreea Tufescu
Focusmate is similar to Flow Club, but puts users into pairs instead of groups. It was founded in 2016 by Taylor Jacobson, who had long fought procrastination himself. In 2011, he asked to work remotely — “and then I got fired from my job,” he explains, “because I just could not focus.” When he later got into coaching, he discovered the power of virtual coworking, and was convinced it could help millions of others like him.
Focusmate has now hosted over five million sessions, with users in over 150 countries. Like Flow Club, it was not designed with neurodivergence in mind (nor was Jacobson initially aware of the concept of body doubling), although more than a third of current users identify as neurodivergent and about 28 percent have an ADHD diagnosis. And while Focusmate is billed as being for “anyone who wants to get things done,” Jacobson suggests its value is much deeper, as he knows from experience: “When we say procrastination… you’re not living the life you want to live. ‘Procrastination’ sounds kind of trite, but it’s not. It’s really demoralizing and sad.”
Feedback from Focusmate users backs that up, Jacobson says: “It’s insane how life-changing this is for people.” A recent company survey among 212 regular users with ADHD found that their productivity increased by an average of 152 percent. Ninety-eight percent said Focusmate helped them make good use of their time, 82 percent that it helped them feel less lonely and isolated, and 88 percent that it improved their well-being. Flow Club does not have data specific to ADHD users, but co-founder Ricky Yean points to its “exuberant” testimonials and the fact that users attend an average of 10 to 11 sessions weekly.
CEO of the brain
Joining strangers online to get work done has become increasingly common, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic. Caveday and Flown offer virtual coworking for anyone; other services target particular audiences, like Writers’ Hour or Preacher’s Block. Online “study rooms” for students are also widespread.
Flow Club sessions include features to aid focus, such as optional music and goal lists. Credit: Flow Club
But why do they work? Focusmate cites research on the benefit of “precommitment” and social pressure. Yean points out that even brief social interactions unleash dopamine, which drives motivation (dopamine levels can be lower among people with ADHD). Other research finds that we may change behavior when we know we’re being observed, that company can have a calming effect, and that our performance improves when we train alongside others.
For Haselberger, joining a body doubling session provides that small but important push to get started. “We know from the research that action begets motivation, and not the other way around,” she says. “If you are body doubling, then you’re saying, ‘Okay, I’m going to do this thing.’”
Zareen Ali, the London-based co-founder of Cogs, a mental well-being app for neurodiverse people, suggests body doubling is a way of outsourcing the “CEO of the brain” — the part that’s telling you what to do. “Having someone else take on that role acts as an external motivator,” says Ali.
Belonging matters
For neurodivergent people, there’s also the benefit of feeling less judged. Neurodivergent young people still face “a lot of bullying,” notes Ali, who studied educational neuroscience, and they often value peer support.
Kirsty Holden, 37, echoes the importance of finding like-minded people. She is awaiting an ADHD diagnosis, following years of feeling that something wasn’t right. “I grew up not really feeling a part of anything,” she says.
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Holden, an online business manager based in Yorkshire, England, was not tempted by platforms like Focusmate or Flow Club, but joined the ADHD Business Collective, a coach-led program that includes body doubling sessions. She values the personal element: “Just knowing that those people get me and know my name… that’s what I really like.”
“For a lot of ADHD-ers, we haven’t felt safe to share what is going on in our minds,” Holden adds. But that is changing. “There are people out there that understand this, there are places where we belong.”
More scaffolding
Online body doubling is unlikely to work for everyone. Neurodiversity is “a massive, umbrella term,” Ali points out, and even people with the same diagnosis may be very different. She herself is autistic and finds body doubling distracting.
One of the barriers highlighted by both Focusmate and Flow Club is apprehension about meeting new people. Asking for a body double might also feel like admitting you need help, says Jacobson. Users of both platforms are majority women; Yean wonders if men find it harder to show some vulnerability.
Flow Club founders David Tran and Ricky Yean. Credit: Flow Club
Things have come a long way since the pandemic-prompted surge of remote working. Tools like Zoom expanded what was possible, but there was a lack of tech to properly support new ways of working, says Yean. People were “burning out like crazy” as they struggled with more responsibilities than ever and blurred boundaries between work and personal life.
“We went from ‘we can’t’ to ‘we can,’ but that’s such a low bar!” says Yean. “Are we thriving? Are we happy? … And are we able to manage all this?”
Flow Club — which aims to create a space of positivity and friendliness — is “in our little corner of the internet, which is trying to create a little bit more support, a little bit more scaffolding, a little bit more camaraderie with other people who share your mission or share your goals,” Yean continues. “I think we have learned that there’s ample opportunity to create more of these types of spaces that are much more supportive. And I think you can define ‘supportive’ in so many different ways.”
The post The Perks of Virtual Coworking With Strangers appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
‘Wraparound Support’ Meets Black and Hispanic Girls’ Overlooked Mental Health Needs
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education.
On a sunny but brisk November afternoon inside Robert Abbott Middle School, six eighth-grade girls quickly filed into a small but colorful classroom and seated themselves in a circle.
Yuli Paez-Naranjo, a Working on Womanhood counselor, sported a purple WOW T-shirt as she led the group in a discussion about how values can inform decisions.
“Do you ever feel like two little angels are sitting on each of your shoulders, one whispering good things to you, the other whispering bad things?” Paez-Naranjo asked the girls. The students nodded and giggled.
At the 50-minute WOW circle, girls have a chance to set aside the pressures of the school day, laugh with and listen to one another, and work through personal problems. The weekly meeting is the centerpiece of individual and group therapy that WOW offers throughout the school year to Black and Hispanic girls, and to students of all races who identify as female or nonbinary, in grades six to 12.
The Working on Womanhood program operates in Waukegan, Illinois, and several other school districts around the country. Credit: Camilla Forte / The Hechinger Report
Created in 2011 by Black and Hispanic social workers at the nonprofit organization Youth Guidance, WOW’s goal is to build a healthy sense of self-awareness, confidence and resilience in a population that is often underserved by mental health programs.
Youth Guidance offers WOW to about 350 students in Waukegan Community Unit School District 60, which serves an industrial town of about 88,000 located about 30 miles north of Chicago. Just over 93 percent of the district’s 13,600 students are Black or Hispanic, and about 67 percent come from families classified as low income.
The program also serves students in Chicago, Boston, Kansas City and Dallas. WOW counselors work with school-based behavioral health teams, administrators and teachers to identify students with high stress levels who might benefit from the program.
Recent research shows that WOW works: At a time when teen girls’ mental health is in crisis, a 2023 University of Chicago Education Lab randomized control trial found that WOW reduced PTSD symptoms among Chicago Public Schools participants by 22 percent and decreased their anxiety and depression.
Multiple hurdles, including funding, counselor burnout and distrust of mental health programs stand in the way of getting WOW to more students. But one way the program overcomes impediments is by bringing the program to the place students spend most of their time — school.
Yuli Paez-Naranjo, the Working on Womanhood counselor based at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, Illinois, said she’s seen a decrease in anger and fights among the girls participating in the mental health support program. Credit: Camilla Forte / The Hechinger Report
Paez-Naranjo, who is so well-liked among Abbott students that even kids who aren’t in the program seek her out, posed a question to the group.
“Let’s talk about positive and negative consequences of certain decisions. How about fighting?” she asked.
“The only positive outcome is you may find out how strong you are,” said Deanna Palacio, one of the girls.
“Why fight when you can talk it out?” asked another student, Ka’Neya Lehn.
“Right? What’s the point?” said a third girl, Ana Ortiz.
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Nacole Milbrook, Youth Guidance chief program officer, said WOW was developed to address often overlooked needs among Hispanic and Black girls. “Girls have been left out [of mental health support initiatives], mainly because they are not making trouble,” she said.
A baseline study of over 2,000 girls in Chicago’s public schools, conducted by the University of Chicago Education Lab team, found “staggeringly high” rates of trauma exposure: Nearly one third of the participating young women had witnessed someone being violently assaulted or killed, and almost half lost someone close to them through violent or sudden death. Some 38 percent of girls in this group showed signs of PTSD, double the rate of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Once a week, girls at Robert Abbott Middle School and other schools in the Waukegan, Illinois, area meet with their peers and a counselor to work through personal problems. Credit: Camilla Forte / The Hechinger Report
Paez-Naranjo and fellow WOW counselor Te’Ericka Kimbrough, who works at Waukegan Alternative/Optional Educational Center, have supported students who have suffered sexual assault. Some participants in their circles are teen parents. Others are trying to resist negative peer pressure. Still others are in families that are struggling financially.
Compared to other students, Black and Hispanic students have a harder time getting mental health support in school. In-school mental health support targeted to girls, especially evidence-based, sustained programs like WOW, is scarce or nonexistent in many public schools.
Even scarcer is mental health support from providers who can give culturally responsive care. Only five percent of US mental health providers are Hispanic. Just 4 percent are Black.
Ana Ortiz, an eighth grader at Robert Abbott Middle School, said the Working on Womanhood program “helps me understand better about myself.” Credit: Camilla Forte / The Hechinger Report
Sally Nuamah, associate professor of urban politics in human development and social policy at Northwestern University, said the tendency of adults to view Black youth as more adult-like than their white peers can shroud the mental health needs of Black children. In addition, the girls’ own positive behavior can mask their needs: In a study of the WOW program, participants were found to have strong school attendance and at least a B average, even as more than a third showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.
“They are perceived as resilient and possessing grit,” Nuamah said. “This obscures the real mental health needs of students of color and perpetuates institutionally racist policies because these students are not perceived as needing the same resources.”
Serving students where they are physically present nearly 200 days per year is one way to fill the too-often unmet need for support, Nuamah said.
“WOW is the only [school-based] organization that does what it does to the extent that it does,” she said. “Most [mental health] services are offered out of school.”
Laurel Crown, Youth Guidance senior research and evaluation manager, said the nonprofit is working to figure out just what parts of the program work best. End-of-school-year participant surveys, which use measures similar to those used in the Education Lab study, suggest that the relationships developed between WOW counselors and participants are a key reason the program is effective.
“Our theory of change is that WOW works because … [students] are attending this incredibly powerful support group every week and this support person is there every day in the school for them,” Crown said.
WOW counselors are “systemically engaged” in the schools where they are based, said Fabiola Rosiles-Duran, WOW program supervisor for Waukegan. They stay informed about whole-school dynamics by being part of behavioral health team and all-staff meetings.
Counselors Kimbrough and Paez-Naranjo added that daily access to teachers and staff provides wraparound support for their students. The counselors’ presence also helps them respond to acute situations immediately and follow up on student progress each school day.
“If I need extra support with a student, I can lean on the school behavioral health team,” Kimbrough said. She added that if she has a student in crisis, being able to see that student
regularly helps her know if their interventions are working.
Deanna Palacio, an eighth grader at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, Illinois, said she feels “heard and understood” by her peers and counselor in the Working on Womanhood program. Credit: Camilla Forte / The Hechinger Report
Providing intensive support to students every school day can be emotionally taxing for WOW counselors. Youth Guidance provides group training and individual support to help counselors maintain their own emotional health.
During their first year on the job, counselors participate in three hours of curriculum training each month plus three days of refresher courses. Many training activities mirror those the counselors will later use with their students.
WOW leaders also check in every weekday to offer support to the counselors. Those new to WOW also attend a two-day, three-night retreat that “helps counselors and staff figure out what’s happening within ourselves,” said Ngozi Harris, Youth Guidance director of program and staff development, “so we have the fuel to do this work.”
One study found that the multiple layers of support WOW offers students and staff, at a cost of about $2,300 per participant, are cost-effective. Still, that can amount to a significant portion of a district’s or school’s annual budget.
But Jason Nault, Waukegan CUSD 60’s associate superintendent of equity, innovation and accountability, said WOW is well worth the cost. Earlier this year, the district’s Board of Education approved a two-year extension of its contract with WOW and its counterpart for male students, Becoming a Man, at a cost of $4.2 million.
Nault said data Youth Guidance collects at the end of each school year shows WOW students are less depressed and anxious, more self-confident and have less post-traumatic stress.
Yet multiple implementation challenges exist for WOW and other school-based student support programs. One is that the work of counselors is isolating and can lead to psychological burnout, said Inger Burnett-Zeigler, associate professor of psychology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
“There is significant and chronic and traumatic stress the WOW counselors experience,” she said. Burnett-Zeigler is working with WOW to develop and test an evidence-based mindfulness intervention to support counselors.
“Counselor well-being is important in and of itself,” said Burnett-Zeigler. It also can support youth outcomes, she said.
By being embedded in the schools such as Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, Illinois, Working on Womanhood counselors say they can build deeper bonds with the students in their mental health support program. Credit: Camilla Forte / The Hechinger Report
Another barrier experienced by programs like WOW is that, according to research, Hispanic and Black families are more reluctant to seek out mental health support and treatment than other ethnic and racial groups. The WOW program works to build trust not only with the students, but
with their parents and family members.
“Families of color have a tendency to not name mental health issues as mental health issues,” said Milbrook, the chief program officer for the organization that oversees WOW. “Seeking treatment still has a stigma, even for children.”
Milbrook said the school-based setting is key for destigmatizing both mental health conditions and treatment.
“Being in school and participating in the groups with other students, understanding that you’re not the only person dealing with these same problems, and talking about them in ways that don’t feel like their idea of traditional therapy” all help, she said.
Also essential, Milbrook added, is fostering a sense of belonging. “We give the participants WOW T-shirts, and now they can walk around the school identifying as Working on Womanhood girls,” she said. “All of a sudden, nobody is ashamed to be in this group.”
Deanna, the Abbott eighth grader, added that the sense of belonging WOW fosters has helped her feel less lonely.
“You feel heard and understood here,” she said.
Although the school setting presents advantages for WOW, it can also involve implementation challenges. Youth Guidance’s Harris said that both WOW staff and school staff want positive outcomes for WOW students, but WOW’s healing-centered approach might conflict with a school’s discipline policy. So, school staff might initially be wary of program staff and counselors.
Schools also sometimes underestimate the expertise of the counselors, and sometimes even ask them to take on tasks like cafeteria monitoring that are not their responsibility.
“It takes a year of building relationships, really being intentional about how to collaborate with the school,” said Harris. “Until that trust is built, you are an outsider.”
Paying for the program is another challenge. Although Waukegan CUSD 60 covers all program costs, most districts do not. Youth Guidance relies primarily on philanthropic support to pay for its programs.
Youth Guidance is less likely to tap into public funding sources like Medicaid because the public assistance program’s cumbersome processes can lead to higher program costs and even threaten the trust WOW builds with students and their families.
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For example, WOW counselors often make numerous phone calls to parents, or visit them at home. It’s time well spent, Milbrook said, but it’s not financially productive. Counselors can only bill their time to Medicaid after a parent signs a consent form.
Despite some of these implementation challenges, WOW leaders and counselors consider the Waukegan WOW program a success.
“As a whole [group], I’ve seen a decrease in anger and fights,” said Paez-Naranjo, the Abbott Middle WOW counselor.
The lessons on mindfulness during WOW Circles at Abbott Middle School have helped Ana Ortiz build confidence in her emerging identity as a young woman. She, like her other classmates in the program, returned for a second year after starting WOW as seventh graders.
“Before I came here, I was not finding myself at all,” Ana said. “I wanted to know, how is it, being a woman? I wanted to know what other girls’ opinions and perspectives were.”
Paez-Naranjo said she has seen Ana’s growth since last school year.
“Ana has stepped out of her comfort zone a lot more. She feels more confident to share intimate details about her life and is willing to support anyone in need,” said Paez-Naranjo.
“And she is so much more smiley,” Paez-Naranjo added. “You can see her smile from a mile away.”
Later, on her way out of the Wednesday Abbott WOW circle, Ana turned back to offer a final take on how WOW has helped her.
“It makes me feel free in here,” she said, flashing one of those smiles. “I understand better about myself.”
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