Caring for Ourselves When We’re Caring for Others
It’s Mental Health Awareness Month! Each week we’re focusing on a different aspect of mental wellness. This week’s focus is self-care. As parents and caregivers, we all face stress – stress in the workplace, in the home, and virtually everywhere that people interact. Caring for a child or youth with complex emotional and behavioral needs brings added tensions to our lives. In order to combat the damages stress can bring about we need to recognize and manage it effectively and insightfully. When left unchecked, accumulated stress goes on to undermine us, disrupt our body’s...
Read MoreRestore Non-Medicaid Funding for Mental Health and Substance Abuse
by Pam Romine, GPS Office and Volunteer Coordinator Even during the best of economic times, youth and adults living with mental illness struggle to access essential mental health services and supports. Services are often unavailable or inaccessible for those who need them the most. One in 17 people in America lives with a serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder. About one in 10 children live with a serious mental disorder. Unfortunately, the public often focuses on mental illness only when high visibility tragedies of the magnitude of Newtown...
Read MoreTwo of my Favorite Objectives
by Ron Jaeger, GPS Board Member I’ve been looking over my notes from the King County Mental Health Forum last November. The forum touched on two of my favorite objectives for legislative advocacy. They are both general but apply to a lot of the changes I believe that families want to see: 1) Empower families and communities to help loved ones 2) Incentivize the systems to help people as early as possible You may remember the comments of Jim Volendroff, the new Division Director of King County Mental Health and Chemical Abuse Dependency who said “As an adolescent, I had my...
Read MorePolice Engagement Workshop
Guided Pathways -Support for Youth & Families is one of many youth- and family-serving organizations concerned about the school to jail pipeline and police use of force against youth of color and those who struggle with emotional, behavioral and substance abuse challenges. In partnership with Atlantic Street Center, Guided Pathways is leading a series of community conversations on these issues. The first of the series began last week with a parent class on involvement with police. Police Engagement Workshop, by Samantha-Jo Fry, GPS Social Media Volunteer The Atlantic Street Family center...
Read MoreIncrease Tabacco Purchase Age
By Gary Sterile, GPS Parent Partner At this year’s King County Mental Health and Substance Abuse Legislative Forum, attendees were presented with a slate of legislative priorities and requests related to behavioral health and substance abuse. I’d like to spend this blog entry discussing some of the reasons why I believe revising RCW 70.155.080 to increase the tobacco purchase age from 18 years to 21 years is important. As a Parent Partner here at Guided Pathways, I’ve worked with a number of parents who are concerned with the tobacco use of their kids; and so this issue is relevant and...
Read MoreMusings from Susan’s Desk
It’s always a joy to hear a success story. It’s especially heartening to hear when a youth who is at-risk for adverse life outcomes gets support to overcome challenges and surmount barriers to success. One such story belongs to GPS Youth Peer Coordinator Ashley Peoples. Ashley’s parents divorced when she was young and she had no one to talk to about dealing with the issues she faced at home. “I often times felt lost and out of place, like I had no voice, no one to try to assist me,” she said. Growing up one of eight children in Louisiana, she was taught that whatever happened...
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