Good morning! ☀️

Although we don’t often talk about it, we have made significant progress throughout society. For example, the number of people living in absolute poverty (one dollar per day) has plummeted over the past two centuries. This is incredible given that the world’s population has increased 7x during the same time.

Furthermore, about half of the world’s countries are now democracies. This significant expansion occurred following the end of World War 1.

We have made tremendous progress in other domains as well. Last week, we spoke about how women are having less children than before (a good indicator of decreased child mortality and increased opportunities for women).

Of course, we must not be blind. There are still many bad things happening across the world. But perhaps instead of seeing it from a perspective of “everything is horrible”, we can see the state of the world as “not too good, but getting better”. That also empowers us. We recognize that many kind and courageous people before us have contributed to these improvements, and that perhaps we can be part of the solution for the generations that come after us.

If all of this sounds interesting, you can try your hand at this quiz: https://upgrader.gapminder.org/t/sdg-world-un-goals/19/

Social work-related news

• Despite legalization of Marijuana in March of 2021, some NYC child welfare agencies are still citing marijuana in family separations

• The new 988 mental health crisis line saw a jump in calls and texts during its first month. New data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show that in August – the first full month that 988 was operational — the Lifeline saw a 45% increase in the overall volume of calls, texts and chats compared to August 2021

• A growing area of psychiatry, called street psychiatry or street medicine, has developed in the U.S. in several metro areas like Boston, Oakland and Los Angeles

Reads on research

• The growth of psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners helped offset the drop in psychiatrists treating Medicare patients. In the states where PMHNPs have no restrictions on prescribing medications, these providers account for 50% of all mental health prescriber visits in rural areas, which was much greater than we had anticipated.

Other reads on policy

• Last month, Florida restricted Medicaid insurance coverage for gender dysphoria treatments for transgender people. This week, transgender beneficiaries sued the state over this restriction, citing that this restriction is unconstitutional

Tech News 😎

• More users of Cerebral, one of the largest online mental health care providers, are reporting they have problems with Cerebral's quality of care.

• Headspace Health is acquiring Shine, a mental health and wellness app dedicated to providing an inclusive mental health experience for the BIPOC community

• Trek Health, a company that eliminates the lengthy manual tasks required for financial transactions for mental health providers and enables instant reimbursement of insurance claims for provider groups, raised a $2.7M seed round

• Little Otter, a children’s mental health startup that launched in 2021 and has raised a total of $26 million to date-to-school tools, acquired Little Renegades, a children’s mindfulness and emotional wellness company

Other

• Beginning August 2022, 10 associate social workers will join Lyra for our two-year paid fellowship with comprehensive health benefits and access to no-cost clinical supervision that will enable participants to attain 3,000 hours of supervised work experience in a healthy training environment.

• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) & Social Impact Lead at Airtable

• Social work podcast: Doin' The Work: Frontline Stories of Social Change

• The 2022 Mental Health Services Conference will bring together the whole team caring for those with mental illness, including psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, primary care physicians, social workers, and more, to collaborate on practical advice to influence systems-level change for their patients.