I wrote this five years ago. I don’t think we’ve done better by mental health since then. Not on any level. The good news is that in certain demographics, there seems to be less stigma. But that’s not enough. We need to understand this public health crisis and respond. But first, people probably need healthcare.
From November, 2013:
This evening I was going over some notes from last year and came across something taken in part from the April 2011 issue of Sojourners. I’ve transcribed my scribbly notes below:
Some ancients called nature The Garden of Delight, while others framed their narratives more violently. But if we think of God not as a warrior but as a gardener, we might think about what it means to join in the garden of God’s Delight. How would we change if we saw the world as a garden? What if we actually planted? What if our political priorities actually healed people?
Earlier today, I was with an interfaith group and we talked about how the seeds of the mental health crisis in this country were sewn when state hospitals started shutting down and programs standing in the gap were (and are) left woefully underfunded.
How would the world look if we actually planted? If our priorities actually healed?
I followed up with this.
Chris Cocca 