Good morning! ☀️

Yesterday, the mental health emergency hotline officially rebranded. Users can now dial 988 instead of having to remember the memorable number of the old hotline: 1-800-273-8255 (Yes, this is also the title of Logic’s song, 1-800-273-8255, which may have actually led to a decrease in suicides).

The goal of the rebranding is to allow the hotline to be more easily remembered. Also, the hotline will allow for the dispatching of mental health professionals instead of police officers. Because this is a government initiative, it will take time to be fully implemented across the country.

Currently, many cities are scrambling to hire employees for the hotline. This leads us to wonder whether this could be an opportunity to create paid opportunities for graduate students 👀

Question: Worldwide, what are the top 3 causes of death?

News

The shifting business landscape

Mental healthcare in the United States is undergoing a seismic shift. As we’ve discussed previously, funding in the space, especially in digital behavioral health, has increased exponentially over the past few years.

Furthermore, the funding is pushing us into exciting new areas such as psychedelics, which show promise in treating certain mental health disorders such as anxiety and substance use disorders.

Yet this optimism has begun to be balanced with realism. Recently, some platforms have come under scrutiny for unethical practices such as sharing users’ personal data and overprescribing ADHD medication. This, and the apprehension over the situation of the economy, has led some companies to begin cutting costs. This has resulted in layoffs, something which we might continue to see moving forward.

But in a more general sense, seeing beyond the effects of the current economic climate, the unfortunate reality is that businesses are still not responding to the needs of those that need it most.

The concept that businesses, and the economy in general, neglects and further isolates people who are marginalized and disenfranchised is called disinvestment. And disinvestment is correlated with other negative results such as gun violence, which is exemplified through the picture below:

As you can see, there is a relationship between disinvestment (in this case, how far residents live from a bank) and gun violence.

How do we overcome disinvestment? One strategy is to uplift those who are disenfranchised by reducing poverty and the factors that are related to poverty such as the lack of access to education, housing, and health. This can be done through improving schools in low-income neighborhoods, investing in quality affordable housing, and providing universal or subsidized health insurance.

Other strategies include preventing or minimizing displacement, which is when rising home prices push residents out from their neighborhood and into more disinvested communities and perhaps adopting new strategies such as community-centered economic inclusion, which is an approach to build wealth in underinvested places, while driving more equitable city and regional growth.

Other social work-related news

• In 2009, the Texas Legislature passed a bill that required the state to report court-ordered mental health hospitalizations for Texans of all ages to the national firearms background check system. Despite this, there are gaps in reporting for juveniles, which is especially pertinent given the ongoing strings of mass shootings.

• Ohio Social Worker Dr. Patrice Palmer is the 2022 National Social Worker of the Year.

• The social services system “failed” 13 children who were rescued after being starved, shackled and horribly abused by their parents at a Southern California home for years.

• NASW: Urge your U.S. Senators to Support the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act (S. 4182), which “builds upon well-established guidelines from the Department of Labor and represents an important step towards making workplaces safer for social workers.”

Reads on research

• While it is well documented that LGBTQ+ people have higher rates of suicidal ideation, substance abuse and other potentially life-threatening behavioral health risks, there are no standard statistics that record the number of deaths each year for those who identify as LGBTQ+. A professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work is trying to change that.

• The largest study on mindfulness training in schools to date, which involved 28,000 children, 650 teachers and 100 schools, looked at the impact of mindfulness training over an eight-year period and found that the technique didn't help the mental health and well-being of adolescents ages 11 to 14.

Reads on policy

• Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has vetoed three bills, including the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, stating that “This discriminatory legislation would prohibit transgender girls and women from participating on women’s athletic teams or sports. The bill denies opportunities to transgender youth, which would have a devastating impact on a vulnerable population already at greater risk of bullying and depression. The harmful impact of politicizing transgender and other LGBTQ+ issues is evident by increasing rates of suicidal thoughts among LGBTQ+ young people. Even if enacted, this bill would face legal challenges for violating federal law and constitutional guarantees of equal protection.”

• Men in the United States are sicker and more likely to die early from preventable causes compared with their peers in other similarly high-income countries. This is especially true of American men with lower incomes and greater financial stress.

Tech, social work, and cool opportunities 😎

• Book recommendations:

  • Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness, by Andrew Scull

  • Evicted, by Matthew Desmond

  • Invisible Child, by Andrea Elliott

• Intellect, an Asian startup creating culturally competent mental health care for Asia, raised “the largest venture round raised by any mental health company in Asia”: A $10 million addition, for a total of $23 million

• Mental health messaging app Wysa raises $20M

• Various roles at Firsthand, a startup that is “transforming how people with Serious Mental Illnesses engage with care”

• Head of Clinical Programs & Partnerships at a stealth company created by Redesign Health

Answer: Number 1,2, and 3 are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and respiratory diseases, respectively.

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