I missed week 6 for no good reason. Well perhaps there was nothing of import to share. Or I was somewhere between nothing matters and I don’t care.
Here's what I would have been sharing on SM for this week. Some excellent links if I do say so myself.
One of my most fav sites for evidence based research and data presented so even someone like me who doesn't know a Regression Analysis from Recession can learn and be smarter. The link in the subhead will give you a list of articles and a chance to subscribe for free. So worth it.
Alone in America: How Attitudes About Connection Have Impacted Older Adults for the Worse
This is from The Incidental Economist and addresses the crisis of isolation in the elderly. This is a brilliantly detailed in it speaks to how Individualism is killing connection, the elderly are no longer volunteering, housing crisis is exacerbating the crisis of isolation, and all hope is not lost. They have solutions. Good stuff here.
The volunteering aspect of this is a bur under my saddle. So much so that I'm planning a YouTube addressing how organizations are not good at all about the value volunteers bring to the table. Over all my years volunteering I know I’m just free labor.
Rebel Health: The Personal and Professional Passion of Susannah Fox
This piece is from Healthpopuli which is a great site for a lot of healthcare news analyzed and presented so clearly and usable. This is about the book "Rebel Health" by Susannah Fox. The book is 'A field guide to the patient-led revolution in medical care'. We have to must advocate for our own healthcare,
We need this so we all can lead our own healthcare journey with others and do it well. Take a read of the article and you will want to read the book. I mean like come on all know private equity in medicine has just simply fucked us. Profit over patients.
Death doulas and bereavement circles: the rise of grief tourism
"If death is the ultimate journey, then it’s no surprise that a whole programme of travel has sprung up around helping us handle our grief."
This article captured for me the essence of my grief journey. Back in olden times when Donna's died I availed myself of a grief counselor, I went to a great support group set up by the hospice, friends and family were there for me.
This article offers up a level of grief support and community that was not present for me. This speaks to the changing culture of grief and how we are returning to the days when villages gathered around the widowed or bereaved. Google has this great search tool called Ngram viewer which is: "When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g., "British English", "English Fiction", "French") over the selected years. Let's look at a sample graph:" Here is one on the word grief since 2011. Also the graphic below on Google Trends and the word grief.
Stop Opening Up About Your Mental Health Online
mmmmm okay here and on my YouTube Channel and on IG I do open up a bit about my personal head case at times. I'm lucky no one reads or watches my shit so I'm safe.
There is so much logic in this article and smarts for us to consider I had a hard time finding a quote. Well here I go
"So: open up to people you know and trust. Talk to family and friends. If you aren’t fortunate enough to have those, turn to local communities, support groups, professionals when necessary. But stop opening up on the internet. Stop opening up about everything. Give yourself the chance to change organically; give yourself the option of moving on."
Word up on that.
People who live alone are more depressed than those who don’t, survey suggests
"It's not that living alone is bad for you, [but] there's something about living with another person that can create a little bit of a push to do habits that can improve your mood," says psychologist and "Stress Resets" author Jenny Taitz.
I would agree with this. I know for me the drive to do all the chores and the little self-care things keeps me moving forward. Though at times it’s not enough. I will fall into that black place called boredom. Which is scary for me.
A friend called yesterday asked me to go with them to return a gift. Her sister was there we went and had tea, laughed, and connected. That was super helpful. Connection is at the heart of our humanity and need to thrive.
A Bronx school district offers lessons in boosting student mental health
This exercise by a Bronx School District speaks loudly on ways we can help students overcome "42% of high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness and 22% seriously considered suicide. This is a significant increase from 10 years earlier, when 28% of students reported persistent feelings of sadness or loneliness and 16% considered attempting suicide."
Connect to community: Helps educators understand child and family needs and allows community members to trust schools as a source of support. This includes free clinics, fool pantries, housing programs and mental health resources into schools where families can more easily access them.
Give Students a seat at the table: In the Bronx CSD 7 students are part of the Superintendent's Advisory Council. "When youth are empowered to share their stories, they not only strengthen their school community, but they also serve as trusted messengers for their peers."
Think developmentally: "Research shows that young people who communicated more often with friends were less impacted by the social isolation of the pandemic. The experience of Bronx CSD 7 shows that schools could play an instrumental role in nurturing this force for mental well-being."
3 Easy Ways to Boost Your Mood Right Now, According to Science
This is really clever the way they set it up in incriminates of one minute, five minutes, or ten minutes of time.
The one minute of time to boost your mood, Say what you're grateful for out loud. mmmm I know that seems obvious but it works. For me I try to say to those hard working folks at the check out counter "How you doing? Having a good day?" I do that as a way to say out loud I'm grateful that I give a moment of kindness to another. Try it out you'll thank me.